V.I. Lenin ~ Collected Works. Volume 1. 1893 - 1894

W O R K E R S O F A L L C O U N T R I E S , U N I T E!

LENIN cOLLEcTED WORKS

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THE RUSSIAN EDITION WAS PRINTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH A DECISION OF THE NINTH CONGRESS OF THE R.C.P.(B.) AND THE SECOND CONGRESS OF SOVIETS OF THE U.S.S.R.

ИНCTИTУT МАРKCИзМА — ЛЕНИНИзМА пpи ЦK KНCC

B. n. l d H n H СОЧИНEНИЯ

И з дa нuе чеmвеpmoe

ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ИЗДАТЕЛЬСТВО ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ MОСКВА

V. I. L E N I N cOLLEcTED WORKS

VOLUME

1 !](# – !](4

PROGRESS PUBLISHERS M O S C O W

PUBLISHER’S NOTE This English edition of V. I. Lenin’s Collected Works is a translation of the Fourth, enlarged Russian edition prepared by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. Corrections have been made to some of the texts and notes in accordance with Ihe fifth Russian edition, and some further editorial comments have been added.

From Marx to Mao M L

© Digital Reprints 2008 www .marx 2 mao .com

First printing 1960 Second printing 1963 Third printing 1972 Fourth printing 1977

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10102–668 014(01)–77

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CONTENTS Preface to Volume One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9

1893 NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE (On V. Y.

Postnikov'’s Peasant I . II . III . IV . V .

Farming in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

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11 13 17 32 43 69

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South Russia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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. 79 . 79 . 84 . 89 . 93 . 99 . 107 . 122

1894 WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE AND HOW THEY FIGHT THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. (A Reply to Articles in Rus-

skoye Bogatstvo Opposing the Marxists) Part I . . . . . . . . . . Publisher's Note . . Note to the Present Part III . . . . . . . . . . Appendix I . . . . . Appendix II . . . . . Appendix III . . . .

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129

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131 201 202 203 301 308 326

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THE ECONOMIC CONTENT OF NARODISM AND THE CRITICISM OF IT IN MR. STRUVE’S BOOK. (THE REFLECTION OF MARXISM IN BOURGEOIS LITERATURE.) P. Struve. Critical Remarks on the

Subject of Russia’s Economic Development, St. Petersburg, 1894 333 Chapter I A Line-by-Line Commentary on a Narodnik Profession de foi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 40

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CONTENTS

Chapter I I A Criticism of Narodnik Sociology . . . . . . Chapter III The Presentation of Economic Problems by the Narodniks and by Mr. Struve . . . . . . . . Chapter IV How Mr. Struve Explains Some Features of Russia’s Post-Reform Economy . . . . . . . . I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notes

395 424 45 1

453 480 486 489 493 500

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The Life and Work of V. I. Lenin. Outstanding Dates . . . . 537

ILLUSTRATIONS

V. I. Lenin, 1918

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2-3

V. I. Lenin, 1890-1891 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10-11

First manuscript page of Lenin’s New Economic Developments in Peasant Life, 1893 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12-13

First manuscript page of Lenin’s On the So-Called Market Question, 1893 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

77

Last manuscript page of Lenin’s On the So-Called Market Question, 1893 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

127

Cover of Part III, hectographed edition, of Lenin’s What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, 1894 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

208-209

Last page of Part III, hectographed edition, of Lenin’s What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, 1894 . . . . . . . . . . .

300-301

Title page of the miscellany containing Lenin's The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book, 1895 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

335

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PREFACE TO VOLUME ONE

The first volume contains four works (New Economic Developments in Peasant Life, On the So-Called Market Question, What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats, The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of It in Mr. Struve’s Book) written by V. I. Lenin in 1893-1894, at the outset of his revolutionary activity, during the first years of the struggle to establish a workers’ revolutionary party in Russia. In these works, which are directed against the Narodniks and “legal Marxists,” Lenin gives a Marxist analysis of Russia’s social and economic system at the close of the nineteenth century, and formulates a number of programme principles and tasks for the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat. The paper, On the So-Called Market Question, is included in the fourth edition of V. I. Lenin’s Collected Works: it did not appear in earlier editions. Lenin wrote the paper in the autumn of 1893. The manuscript was believed to be lost beyond recall and was discovered only in 1937, when it was published for the first time. Lenin’s work What the “Friends of the People” Are is published in the present edition according to a new copy of the hectographed edition of 1894 which came into the possession of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism only in 1936, and was not taken account of in previous editions of the Works of V. I. Lenin. The copy mentioned contains numerous editorial corrections apparently introduced by Lenin when preparing to have the book published abroad. All these corrections have been introduced into the present edition. This edition, therefore, contains the exact text of What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats.

V. I. LENIN 18m 0-18m 1

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE (ON V. Y. POSTNIKOV’S P e a s a n t F a r m i n g i n S o u t h R u s s i a ) 1

Written in the spring of 1 8 9 3 First published in 1 9 2 3

Published according to the manuscript

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I V. Y. Postnikov’s Peasant Farming in South Russia (Moscow, 1891, pp. XXXII # 391), which appeared two years ago, is an extremely detailed and thorough description of peasant farming in the Taurida, Kherson and Yekaterinoslav gubernias, * but chiefly in the mainland (northern) uyezds of Taurida Gubernia. This description is based firstly—and primarily—on the Zemstvo 2 statistical investigations of the three gubernias mentioned; and, secondly, on the author’s personal observations made partly in his official capacity, ** and partly for the special purpose of studying peasant farming in 1887-1890. An attempt to combine into one whole the Zemstvo statistical investigations for an entire region and to set forth the results in systematic form is in itself of tremendous interest, since the Zemstvo statistics provide a mass of detailed material on the economic conditions of the peasantry, but they do so in a form that renders these investigations practically useless to the public: the Zemstvo statistical abstracts comprise whole volumes of tables (a sep-

* Administrative divisions: the biggest territorial division in tsarist Russia was the gubernia (literally—governor’s province); each gubernia had its capital city which was the seat of the governor. The gubernia was divided in uyezds (counties) each with its administrative centre and these, in turn were divided into volosts (rural districts) containing a number of villages.—Ed. Eng. ed. ** The author was an official in the Government Land Department of Taurida Gubernia.

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arate volume is usually devoted to each uyezd), the mere summarising of which under sufficiently definite and comprehensive headings is a labour in itself. The need to summarise and analyse Zemstvo statistical data has long been felt. It is for this purpose that the publication of the Results of Zemstvo Statistical Investigations was recently undertaken. The plan of this publication is as follows: a particular question related to peasant farming is taken, and a special investigation is carried out, bringing together all the data on this question contained in the Zemstvo statistics; data are brought together relating to the black-earth South of Russia and to the non-black-earth North, to the exclusively agricultural gubernias and to the gubernias where there are handicraft industries. The two published volumes of Results have been compiled according to this plan; the first is devoted to the “peasant community” (V. V.), the second to “peasant rentings of non-allotment land” (N. Karyshev). 3 It is quite reasonable to doubt the correctness of this method of summarising: firstly, data relating to different economic regions with different economic conditions have to be placed under one heading (the separate characterisation of each region involves tremendous difficulties due to the incompleteness of the Zemstvo investigations and the omission of many uyezds. These difficulties were already evident in the second volume of Results; Karyshev’s attempt to assign the data contained in the Zemstvo statistics to definite regions was unsuccessful); secondly, it is quite impossible to give a separate description of one aspect of peasant farming without touching on others; the particular question has to be artificially abstracted, and the completeness of the picture is lost. Peasant rentings of non-allotment land are divorced from the renting of allotment land, from general data on the economic classification of the peasants and the size of the crop area; they are regarded only as part of peasant farming, whereas actually they are often a special method of private-landowner farming. That is why a summary of Zemstvo statistical data for a given region where the economic conditions are uniform would, I think, be preferable. While expressing, in passing, my views on a more correct way of summarising Zemstvo statistical investigations,

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

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views to which I am led by comparing the Results with Postnikov’s book, I must, however, make the reservation that Postnikov did not, in fact, aim at summarising materials: he pushes the figures into the background and concentrates his attention on a full and clear description. In his description, the author pays almost equal attention to questions of an economic, administrative-legal character (forms of land tenure) and of a technical character (boundaries, farming system, harvests), but with the intention of keeping questions of the first kind in the foreground. “I must confess,” says Mr. Postnikov in the Preface, “that I devote less attention to the technique of peasant farming than I might have done; but I take this course because, in my view, conditions of an economic character play a much more important part in peasant farming than technique. In our press ... the economic aspect is usually ignored.... Very little attention is paid to investigating fundamental economic problems, such as the agrarian and boundary problems are for our peasant farming. It is to the elucidation of these problems, and of the agrarian problem in particular, that this book is chiefly devoted” (Preface, p. IX). Fully sharing the author’s views on the relative importance of economic and technical questions, I intend to devote my article only to that part of Mr. Postnikov’s work in which peasant farming is subjected to political-economic investigation. * In his preface the author defines the main points of the investigation as follows: “The considerable employment of machines that has recently become evident in peasant farming and the marked increase in the size of farms belonging to the well-to-

* It seems to me that such an exposition is worthwhile, inasmuch as Mr. Postnikov’s book, one of the most outstanding in our economic literature of recent years, has passed almost unnoticed. This may partly be explained by the fact hat although the author recognises the great importance of economic problems, he treats them too fragmentarily and encumbers his exposition with details relating to other problems.

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V. I. L E N I N

do section of the peasantry, constitute a new phase in our agrarian life, the development of which will undoubtedly receive a new stimulus from the severe economic conditions of the present year. The productivity of peasant labour and the working capacity of the family rise considerably with the increase in the size of the farm and the employment of machines, a point hitherto overlooked in defining the area that a peasant family can cultivate.... “The employment of machines in peasant farming causes substantial changes in peasant life: by reducing the demand for labour in agriculture and rendering the existing agricultural over-population still more acute for the peasants, it helps to increase the number of families which, having become superfluous in the villages, are forced to seek outside employment and virtually become landless. At the same time, the introduction of large machines in peasant farming raises the peasant’s living standard, even under the prevailing methods and extensive character of agriculture, to a level hitherto undreamt-of. Therein lies the guarantee of the strength of the new economic developments in peasant life. To draw attention to and elucidate these developments among the peasantry of South Russia is the immediate purpose of this book” (Preface, p. X). Before proceeding to outline what, in the opinion of our author, these new economic developments are, I must make two reservations. Firstly, it has been said above that Postnikov provides data for Kherson, Yekaterinoslav and Taurida gubernias; data in sufficient detail are given only for the latter gubernia, however, and then not for the whole of it; the author gives no data for the Crimea, where the economic conditions are somewhat different, and confines himself exclusively to the three northern, mainland uyezds of Taurida Gubernia— Berdyansk, Melitopol and Dnieper uyezds. I shall confine myself to the data for these three uyezds. Secondly, in addition to Russians, Taurida Gubernia is inhabited by Germans and Bulgarians, whose numbers, however, are small compared with the Russian population: in Dnieper Uyezd, there are 113 households of German colonists out of 19,586 households in the uyezd, i.e., only 0.6%; in Melitopol Uyezd, there are 2,159

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

17

(1,874 # 285) German and Bulgarian households out of 34,978, i.e., 6.1%. Lastly, in Berdyansk Uyezd, 7,224 households out of 28,794, i.e., 25%. Taken together, in all the three uyezds, the colonists account for 9,496 households out of 83,358, i.e., about one-ninth. Consequently, the number of colonists is, on the whole, very small, and in the Dnieper Uyezd is quite insignificant. The author describes the colonists’ farming in detail, always separating it from that of the Russians. All these descriptions I omit, confining myself exclusively to the farming of the Russian peasants. True, the figures given combine the Russians and the Germans, but, owing to the small number of the latter, their addition cannot change the general picture, so that it is quite permissible, on the basis of these data, to describe Russian peasant farming. The Russian population of Taurida Gubernia, who have settled in this region during the past 30 years, differ from the peasantry of the other Russian gubernias only by their greater affluence. Community land tenure in these areas is, in the words of our author, “typical and stable.” * In a word, if the colonists are omitted, peasant farming in Taurida Gubernia does not differ fundamentally from the general type of Russian peasant farming, II “At the present time,” says Postnikov, “a SouthRussian village of any size (and the same can probably be said of most localities in Russia) presents such a variegated picture as regards the economic status of the various groups of its inhabitants, that it is very difficult to speak of the living standard of separate villages as single units, or to depict this standard in average figures. Such average figures indicate certain general conditions that determine the economic life of the peasantry, but they do not give any idea of the great diversity of economic phenomena that actually exists” (p. 106). A little further on, Postnikov expresses himself still more definitely:

* Individual

land tenure prevails in only 5 villages.

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V. I. L E N I N

“The diversity in economic level,” he says, “makes it extremely difficult to settle the question of the general prosperity of the population. People who make a cursory tour through the large villages of Taurida Gubernia usually draw the conclusion that the local peasants are very prosperous. But can a village be called prosperous when half its peasants are rich, while the other half live in permanent poverty? And by what criteria is the relatively greater or lesser prosperity of a particular village to be determined? Obviously, average figures characterising the condition of the population of a whole village or district are here insufficient to draw conclusions as to the prosperity of the peasants. This latter may be judged only from the sum-total of many facts, by dividing the population into groups” (p. 154). One might think that there is nothing new in this statement of the differentiation of the peasantry; it is referred to in practically every work dealing with peasant farming in general. But the point is that, as a rule, when mention is made of the fact, no significance is attached to it, it being regarded as unimportant or even incidental. It is deemed possible to speak of a type of peasant farming, the type being defined by average figures; discussion takes place about the significance of various practical measures in relation to the peasantry as a whole. In Postnikov’s book we see a protest against such views. He points (and does so repeatedly) to the “tremendous diversity in the economic status of the various households within the village community” (p. 323), and takes up arms against “the tendency to regard the peasant mir * as something integral and homogeneous, such as our urban intelligentsia still imagine it to be” (p. 351). “The Zemstvo statistical investigations of the past decade,” he says, “have shown that our village community is by no means the homogeneous unit our publicists of the seventies thought it was, and that in the past few decades there has taken place within it a differentiation of the population into groups with quite different levels of economic prosperity” (p. 323).

* Mir—a peasant community. See Note 4 at the end of the book. —Ed. Eng. ed.

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Postnikov supports his opinion with a mass of data dispersed throughout the book, and we must proceed to gather all these data systematically in order to test the truth of this opinion and to decide who is right—whether it is the “urban intelligentsia,” who regard the peasantry as something homogeneous, or Postnikov, who asserts that there is tremendous heterogeneity—and then how profound is this heterogeneity, does it prevent a general description of peasant farming being given from the political-economic standpoint, on the basis of only average data, and can it alter the action and influence of practical measures in relation to the various categories of the peasantry? Before citing figures that supply the material to settle these questions, it should be noted that Postnikov took all data of this kind from the Zemstvo statistical abstracts for Taurida Gubernia. Originally, the Zemstvo census statistics were confined to data covering whole village communities, no data being collected on individual peasant households. Soon, however, differences were noted in the property status of these households, and house-to-house censuses were undertaken; this was the first step towards a more thoroughgoing study of the economic status of the peasants. The next step was the introduction of combined tables: prompted by the conviction that the property differences among the peasants within the village community 4 are more profound than the differences between the various juridical categories of peasants, the statisticians began to classify all the indices of peasant economic status according to definite property differences; for example, they grouped the peasants according to the number of dessiatines * under crops, the number of draught animals, the amount of allotment arable per household, and so on. The Taurida Zemstvo statistics classify the peasants according to the number of dessiatines under crops. Postnikov is of the opinion that this classification “is a happy one” (p. XII), as “under the farming conditions in the Taurida uyezds, the amount of land under crops is the most important criterion of the peasant’s living standard” (p. XII). “In the South-Russian steppe territory,” says Postnikov, “the

*A

dessiatine= 2.7 acres.—Ed. Eng. ed.

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development among the peasants of various kinds of nonagricultural industries is as yet relatively insignificant, and the main occupation of the vast majority of the rural population today is agriculture based on the cultivation of grain.” “The Zemstvo statistics show that in the northern uyezds of Taurida Gubernia, 7.6% of the native rural population engage exclusively in industries, while 16.3%, in addition to farming their own land, have some subsidiary occupation” (p. 108). As a matter of fact, classification according to area under crops is far more correct even for other parts of Russia than any other basis of classification adopted by the Zemstvo statisticians, as, for example, number of dessiatines of allotment land or allotment arable per household. For, on the one hand, the amount of allotment land is no direct indication of the household’s prosperity, inasmuch as the size of the allotment is determined by the number of registered 5 or of actual males in the family, and is only indirectly dependent on the peasant’s prosperity, and because, lastly, the peasant possibly does not use his allotment land and leases it to others, and when he has no implements he cannot use it. On the other hand, if the principal pursuit of the population is agriculture, the determination of the cultivated area is necessary in order to keep account of production, to determine the amount of grain consumed by the peasant, purchased by him, or placed on the market, for unless these points are ascertained, a highly important aspect of peasant economy will remain unexplained, the character of his farming, its significance relative to other earnings, etc., will not be made clear. Lastly, it is precisely the cultivated area that must be made the basis of classification, so that we can compare the economy of the household with the so-called norms of peasant land tenure and farming, with the food norm (Nahrungsfläche) and the labour norm (Arbeitsfläche). * In a word, clas-

* Food norm and labour norm—as can be seen from the text Lenin uses these expressions as translations of the German politicaleconomic terms “Nahrungsfläche” and “Arbeitsfläche,” the former being the amount of land required to feed one person (or any other unit, such as the family) and the latter the amount that can be cultivated by one person (or family).—Ed. Eng. ed.

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sification according to area under crops not only seems to be a happy one; it is the best and is absolutely essential. As to area under crops the Taurida statisticians divide the peasants into six groups: 1) those cultivating no land; 2) those cultivating up to 5 dessiatines; 3) from 5 to 10 dessiatines; 4) from 10 to 25 dessiatines; 5) from 25 to 50 dessiatines and 6) over 50 dessiatines per household. For the three uyezds the proportionate relation of these groups according to the number of households is as follows:

Uyezds Percentages or households

Cultivating no land ” up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ”

Berdyansk %

6 12 22 38 19 3

Melitopol %

7.5 11.5 21 39 16.6 4.4

Dnieper %

9 11 20 41.8 15. 1 3.1

Average area (dess.) under crops per household in all three uyezds

— 3.5 8 16.4 34.5 75

The general proportions (these percentages are given for the whole population, including Germans) undergo little change if we omit the Germans. Thus, the author reckons that of the households in the Taurida uyezds 40% cultivate small areas (up to 10 dessiatines), 40% medium (from 10 to 25 dessiatines) and 20% large areas. If the Germans are excluded, the latter figure is reduced to one-sixth (16.7%, i.e., in all 3.3% less) and correspondingly increases the number of households with a small cultivated area. To determine the degree to which these groups differ, let us begin with land tenure and land usage. Postnikov gives the following table (the combined totals of the three categories of land mentioned in it were not calculated by him [p. 145]):

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AVERAGE ARABLE PER HOUSEHOLD (dessiatines) Berdyansk Uyezd

Melitopol Uyezd

Dnieper Uyezd

Total

Rented

Total

Purchased

Rented

–

9.4 6.4 0.9

0.1

7.4

” up to 5 dess.

6.9 0.7

0.4

8

7.1

0.2

0.4

7.7

5.5 0.04

0.6 6.1

” 5 to 10 ”

9

1.1

10.1

9

0.2

1.4

10.6

8.7

1.6 10.3

18.7 12.8 0.3

4.5

17.6 12.5 0.6

5.8 18.9

1.5 13.4 38.4 16.6 2.3

17.4 36.3

–

” 10 to 25 ”

14.1 0.6 4

” 25 to 50 ”

27.6 2.1

” over 50 ”

36.7 31.3 48.4 116.4 36.2 21.3 42.5 100

Per uyezd

14.8 1.6

9.8 39.5 23.5

5

21.4 14.1

1.4

6.7

Allotment

Purchased

0.7

Total

8.7

Cultivating no land

Rented

6.8 3.1 0.09 10

Allotment

Allotment

Purchased

Peasant groups

0.05

17.4 30

22.2 11.2

1.7

44

91.4

7.0 19.9

“These figures show,” says Postnikov, “that the more affluent group of peasants in the Taurida uyezds not only have large allotments, which may be due to the large size of their families, but are at the same time the largest purchasers and the largest renters of land” (p. 146). It seems to me that in this connection we need only say that the increase in the amount of allotted land, as we proceed from the bottom group to the top, cannot be explained entirely by the larger size of families. Postnikov gives the following table showing the family composition by groups for the three uyezds.

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NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

persons, both sexes

working members

persons, both sexes

working members

Dnieper Uyezd

working members

Cultivating no land ” up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” over 50 ” ”

Average per family Melitopol Uyezd

persons, both sexes

Berdyansk Uyezd

4.5 4.9 5.6 7.1 8.2 10.6

0.9 1.1 1.2 1.6 1.8 2.3

4.1 4.6 5.3 6.8 8.6 10.8

0.9 1 1.2 1.5 1.9 2.3

4.6 4.9 5.4 6.3 8.2 10.1

1 1.1 1.2 1.4 1.9 2.3

6.6

1.5

6.5

1.5

6.2

1.4

Per uyezd

The table shows that the amount of allotment land per household increases from the bottom group to the top much more rapidly than the number of persons of both sexes and the number of working members. Let us illustrate this by taking 100 as the figure for the bottom group in Dnieper Uyezd:

Cultivating no land up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ”

Allotment land

Working members

Persons of both sexes

100 86 136 195 259 272

100 110 120 140 190 230

100 106 117 137 178 219

It is clear that what determines the size of the allotment, apart from the composition of the family, is the prosperity of the household. Examining the data for the amount of purchased land in the various groups, we see that the purchasers of land are almost exclusively the top groups, with over 25 dessiatines under crops, and chiefly the very big cultivators, those with 75 dessiatines under crops per household. Hence, the data for purchased land fully corroborate Postnikov’s opinion regarding the differences between the peasant groups. The type of information as that given by the author on p. 147,

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V. I. L E N I N

for example, where he says that “the peasants of the Taurida uyezds purchased 96,146 dessiatines of land,” does not in any way describe the real situation; almost all this land is in the hands of an insignificant minority, those already best provided with allotment land, the “affluent” peasants, as Postnikov calls them; and they constitute no more than one-fifth of the population. The same must be said of rented land. The above table gives the total figure for rented land, allotment and nonallotment. It appears that the area of rented land grows quite regularly the greater the prosperity of the peasants, and that, consequently, the better supplied the peasant is with land, the more he rents, thus depriving the poorer groups of the land they need. It should be noted that this phenomenon is common to the whole of Russia. Prof. Karyshev, summarising the facts of peasant non-allotment rentings throughout Russia, wherever Zemstvo statistical investigations are available, formulates the general law that the amount of rented land depends directly on the renter’s degree of affluence. * Postnikov, incidentally, cites even more detailed figures about the distribution of rented land (non-allotment and allotment together), which I give here:

Cultivating up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ” Per uyezd

18.7 2.1 11 33.6 3.2 9.20 57 7 7.65 60.6 16.1 6.80 78.5 62 4.20

14.4 3 5.50 34.8 4.1 5.52 59.3 7.5 5.74 80.5 16.9 6.30 88.8 47.6 3.93

44.8 11.1 5.80 50

25 42 69 88 91

Price per dess. (rubles)

Dnieper Uyezd Arable

% of renting households per renting household (dess.)

Price per dess. (rubles)

Melitopol Uyezd Arable

% of renting households per renting household (dess.)

Price per dess. (rubles)

% of renting households per renting household (dess.)

Berdyansk Uyezd Arable

2.4 15.25 3.9 12 8.5 4.75 20 3.75 48.6 3.55

12.4 4.86 56.2 12.4

4.23

* Results of the Economic Investigation of Russia According to Zemstvo Statistical Data; Vol. II, N. Karyshev, Peasant Renting of Non-Allotment Land, Dorpat, 1892. Pp. 122, 133 et al.

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

25

We see that here, too, average figures do not in any way describe the real situation. When we say, for example, that in Dnieper Uyezd 56% of the peasants rent land, we give a very incomplete picture of this renting, for the percentage of renters in the groups who (as will be shown later) have insufficient land of their own is much lower—only 25% in the first group, whereas the top group, those who have sufficient land of their own, almost all resort to renting (91%). The difference in the number of rented dessiatines per renting household is even more considerable: the top category rents 30, 15 and 24 times more than the bottom one. Obviously, this alters the very character of the renting, for in the top category it is already a commercial undertaking, whereas in the bottom one it may be an operation necessitated by dire need. This latter assumption is corroborated by data on rentals: they show that the bottom groups pay a higher rent for the land, sometimes four times as much as the top category (in Dnieper Uyezd). It should be recalled in this connection that the increase in rent as the amount of rented land grows smaller is not peculiar to South Russia; Karyshev’s work shows the general applicability of this law. “Land in the Taurida uyezds,” says Postnikov with regard to these data, “is rented chiefly by the well-to-do peasants, who have enough allotment land and land of their own; this should be said in particular of the renting of non-allotment land, i.e., of privately-owned and government, land, situated at greater distances from the villages. Actually this is quite natural: to be able to rent distant land the peasant must have sufficient draught animals, whereas the less prosperous peasants in these areas have not enough even to cultivate their allotment land” (p. 148). It should not be thought that this distribution of rented land is due to its being rented by individuals. There is no difference at all where the land is rented by the community, and for the simple reason that the land is distributed on the same principle, that is, “according to where the money lies.” “According to the registers of the Administration of State Property,” says Postnikov, “in 1890, out of 133,852 dessiatines of government land leased on contract in the

10 to 25

25 to 50

over 50

”

”

”

Totals

5 to 10

”

”

”

”

3,194

10,057

1,453

3,755

2,642

400

66

Dessiatines rented

113

387

687

227

39

Cultivating up to 5 dess.

”

Number of renting households

Peasant groups

Per renting h’hold (dess.) 7

28.3

9.7

3.8

1.8

1.7

Number of renting households 2,002

440

672

707

159

24

Dessiatines rented 29,657

15,365

8,564

4,569

776

383

Per renting h’hold (dess.) 14.8

34.9

12.7

6.4

4.8

16

Number of renting households 681

79

186

338

58

20

Dessiatines rented 4,593

1,724

1,056

1,500

251

62

Per renting h’hold (dess.) 6.7

21.8

5.7

4.4

4.3

3.1

4,136

632

1,245

1,732

444

83

Number of renting households

All three uyzeds

46

30

20

3

1

44,307 100

20,283

13,375

8,711

1,427

511

Dessiatines rented

Dnieper Uyzed

%

Melitopol Uyzed

10.7

32.1

10.7

5.0

3.2

6.1

Per renting h’hold (dess.)

Berdyansk Uyzed

26 V. I. L E N I N

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

27

three uyezds, 84,756 dessiatines of good land, or about 63% of the total area, were used by peasant communities. But the land rented by the peasant communities was used by a comparatively small number of householders, mostly wellto-do at that. The Zemstvo house-to-house census makes this fact quite clear” (p. 150).* “Thus,” concludes Postnikov, “in Dnieper Uyezd more than half of all the rented arable, in Berdyansk Uyezd over two-thirds, and in Melitopol Uyezd, where mostly government land is rented, even more than fourfifths of the rented land was in the hands of the group of well-to-do peasants. On the other hand, the group of poor peasants (cultivating up to 10 dessiatines of arable), held in all the uyezds a total of 1,938 dessiatines, or about 4% of the rented land” (p. 150). The author then cites many examples of the uneven distribution of community-rented land, but there is no need to quote them here. As to Postnikov’s conclusion about the amount of rented land being dependent upon the degree of prosperity of the renter, it is highly interesting to note the opposite view of the Zemstvo statisticians. Postnikov placed an article, “On Zemstvo Statistical Work in Taurida, Kherson and Yekaterinoslav Gubernias” (pp. XI-XXXII), at the beginning of his book. Here, among other things, he examines the Taurida Gubernia Handbook, published by the Taurida Zemstvo in 1889, in which the entire investigation was briefly summarised. Analysing the section of the book which deals with renting, Postnikov says: “In our land-abundant southern and eastern gubernias, the Zemstvo statistics have revealed that a fairly substantial proportion of well-to-do peasants, in addition to having considerable allotments of their own, rent fairly large amounts of land on the side. Farming is here conducted not only to satisfy the requirements of the family itself, but also to obtain some surplus, an income with which to improve buildings, acquire machines and buy additional land. This

* The last section of this table (the totals for the three uyezds) is not given by Postnikov. In a note to the table he says that “under the terms of lease the peasants may plough up only one-third of the rented land.”

28

V. I. L E N I N

is quite a natural desire, and there is nothing reprehensible about it, for in itself it contains no elements of kulakism.” [There are no elements of kulakism here, it is true; but there undoubtedly are elements of exploitation: by renting land far in excess of their requirements, the prosperous peasants deprive the poor of land needed for their subsistence; by enlarging their farms they need extra hands and resort to hiring labour.] “But some of the Zemstvo statisticians, evidently regarding such manifestations in peasant life as something illegitimate, try to belittle their importance and to prove that it is chiefly the need for food that drives the peasant to rent land, and that even if the well-to-do peasants do rent a great deal of land, these renters constitute a percentage that decreases steadily as the size of the allotment increases” (p. XVII)—to prove this point, Mr. Werner, the compiler of the Handbook, grouped together, according to the size of their allotments, the peasant families of the entire Taurida Gubernia who had 1 or 2 working members and 2 or 3 draught animals. It turned out that “as the size of the allotment increases, there is a regular decrease in the percentage of renting households and a less regular decrease in the amount of land rented per household” (p. XVIII). Postnikov quite rightly says that this method is not conclusive at all, since a section of the peasants (only those possessing 2 or 3 draught animals) has been selected arbitrarily, it being precisely the well-to-do peasants who have been omitted, and that, moreover, to lump together the mainland uyezds of Taurida Gubernia and the Crimea is impermissible, since the conditions of renting in the two areas are not identical: in the Crimea, one half to three-fourths of the population are landless (so-called dessiatiners), 6 whereas in the northern uyezds only 3 or 4% are landless. In the Crimea, it is almost always easy to find land for hire; in the northern uyezds it is sometimes impossible. It is interesting to note that the Zemstvo statisticians of other gubernias have been observed to make similar attempts (of course, equally unsuccessful) to tone down such “illegitimate” manifestations in peasant life as renting land to provide an income. (See Karyshev, op. cit.) If, accordingly, the distribution of peasant non-allotment renting reveals the existence among the various peasant

29

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

farms of differences that are not only quantitative (he rents much, he rents little), but also qualitative (he rents through need of food; he rents for commercial purposes), still more has this to be said of the renting of allotment land. “The total allotment arable rented by peasants from other peasants,” says Postnikov, “as registered in the three Taurida uyezds by the 1884-1886 house-to-house census of the peasantry amounted to 256,716 dessiatines, which here constitutes one-fourth of the total peasant allotment arable; and this does not include land let by peasants to all sorts of people who live in the countryside, or to clerks, teachers, priests and other persons who do not belong to the peasantry and are not covered by the house-to-house census. Practically all this land is rented by peasants who belong to the well-to-do groups, as the following figures show. The amount of allotment arable rented by peasants from their neighbours, as recorded by the census, was as follows: Cultivating up to 10 dess. per household 16,594 dess., i.e., Cultivating 10 to 25 dess. per household 89,526 ” ” Cultivating more than 25 dess. per household 150,596 ” ” Total

256,716 dess.

6% 35% 59% 100%

“The major part, however, of this leased land, like most of the lessors themselves, belongs to the group of peasants who cultivate no land, do no farming of any sort, or to those who cultivate but little land. Thus, a considerable number of the peasants of the Taurida uyezds (approximately onethird of the total population) do not exploit their whole allotment—some for lack of desire, but mostly for lack of the necessary animals and implements with which to engage in farming—but lease it to others and thereby increase the land in use by the other, better-off section of the peasants. The majority of the lessors undoubtedly belong to the category of impoverished, declining householders” (pp. 136-37).

30

V. I. L E N I N

Corroboration of this is furnished by the following table “for two uyezds of Taurida Gubernia (the Zemstvo statistics provide no information for Melitopol Uyezd), which shows the proportion of householders who lease their allotments to others, and the percentage of allotment arable leased by them” (p. 135): Berdyansk Uyezd % of h’holders % of leasing leased their allotment allotment land land

Cultivating no land up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ” For uyezd . .

Dnieper Uyezd % of h’holders % of leasing leased their allotment allotment land land

73.0 65.0 46.0 21.5 9 12.7

97.0 54 23.6 8.3 2.7 6.3

80.0 30 23 16 7 7

97.1 38.4 17.2 8.1 2.9 13.8

32.7

11.2

25.7

14.9

Let us now pass from peasant land tenure and land usage to the distribution of farm stock and implements. Postnikov gives the following data—for all three uyezds together—on the number of draught animals possessed by the groups:

Horses

Oxen

Draught animals

Other Animals *

In all *

Total

— 6,467 25,152 80,517 62,823 21,003

— 3,082 8,924 24,943 19,030 11,648

0.3 1.0 1.9 3.2 5.8 10.5

0.8 1.4 2.3 4.1 8.1 19.5

1.1 2.4 4.2 7.3 13.9 30

Total . . . 195,962

67,627

3.1

4.5

7.6

Cultivating no land up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ”

* In

terms of cattle

% of h’holds possessing no dr. animals

Average per household

80.5 48.3 12.5 1.4 0.1 0.03 —

31

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

These figures, by themselves, do not characterise the categories—that will be done below, when we describe the technique of agriculture and classify the peasants according to economic category. Here we shall only mention that the difference between peasant groups with regard to the number of draught animals they own is so profound that we see far more animals in the top groups than can possibly be required for the needs of the family, while the bottom groups have so few (especially draught animals) that independent farming becomes impossible. Similar in every respect are data on the distribution of farm implements. The house-to-house census, that registered the peasant-owned iron ploughs and drill ploughs, gives the following figures for the entire population of the uyezds” (p. 214): Percentage of households

Berdyansk Uyezd Melitopol ” Dnieper ”

with no ploughing implements

with only a drill plough

with an iron plough, etc.

33 37.8 39.3

10 28.2 7

57 34 53.7

This table shows how very large a group of peasants is unable to carry on independent farming. The situation among the top groups can be seen from the following data on the number of implements per household in the various groups, classified according to area under crops: Implements per household Melitopol Dnieper Berdyansk Uyezd Uyezd Uyezd Carting (irons Cart- Plough- Cart- Ploughwagons, ploughs and ing ing ing ing etc.) drill ploughs)

Cultivating 5 to 10 to ” 25 to ” over ”

10 dess. 25 ” 50 ” 50 ”

0.8 1 .2 2.1 3.4

0.5 1.3 2 3.3

0.8 1 .2 2 3.2

0.4 1 1.6 2.8

0.8 1 1.7 2.7

0.5 1 1.5 2.4

As regards the number of implements, the top group has 4 to 6 times more than the bottom one (the group with less than 5 dessiatines under crops is entirely disregarded by the author); as regards the number of working members in the

32

V. I. L E N I N

families, * however, it has
times, i.e., less than twice, as many as the same group. This alone shows that the top group has to resort to the hire of labour, while in the bottom group half the households are without farm implements (N.B.—this “bottom” group is the third from below) and, consequently, are unable to carry on independent farming. Naturally, the above-mentioned differences in the amount of land and implements held are the cause of differences in the amount of land under crops. The area under crops per household in the six groups has been given above. The total area cultivated by the peasants of Taurida Gubernia is distributed by groups as follows:

Cultivating up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” ” ”

25 to 50 over 50 Total

” ”

Dessiatines under crops

%

34,070 140,426 540,093

2.4 9.7 37.6

of crop area held { 12% by 40% of population

230,583 230,583

34.3 16

{

1,439,267

38% of by 40% 50% of by 20%

crop area held of population crop area held of population

100%

These figures speak for themselves. It should only be added that for a family to live by farming alone, Postnikov estimates (p. 272), a crop area of 16 to 18 dessialines per household is required. III In the previous chapter, data showing the property status of the different groups of peasants and the size of their farms were summarised. We must now sum up data indicating the character of the farming of the various groups or peasants and their methods and systems of farming.

* See above, the table showing the family composition of the various groups.

33

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

Let us first dwell on Postnikov’s proposition that “the productivity of peasant labour and the working capacity of the family rise considerably with the increase in the size of the farm and the employment of machines” (p. X). The author demonstrates this proposition by calculating the number of workers and draught animals per given area under crops in the different economic groups. In so doing, however, it is impossible to use the data of family composition, as “the bottom economic groups release part of their working members for outside employment as farm labourers, while the top groups take labourers into employment” (p. 114). The Taurida Zemstvo statistics do not give the number of labourers hired or released for hire, and Postnikov estimates it approximately by taking the Zemstvo statistical data for the number of households which hired people and by calculating how many working people were needed for the given cultivated area. Postnikov admits that he can lay no claim to perfect accuracy for these estimates, but he believes that it is only in the two top groups that his calculations may considerably change the family composition, as the number of hired labourers in the other groups is small. By comparing the data on family composition given above with the following table the reader can test the correctness of this view: In the three uyezds of Taurida Gubernia Working persons Hired

Released for hire

Difference

Average per household Number in Working family persons

*

(with hired labourers)

Cultivating no land up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ”

239 247 465 2,846 6,041 8,241

1,077 1,484 4,292 3,389 — —

— 838 — 1,237 —3.827 — 543 # 6,041 # 8,241

4.3 4.8 5.2 6.8 8.9 13.3

0.9 1.0 1.0 1.6 2.4 5.0

Total

18,079

10,242

# 7,837

—

—

* Working persons—this somewhat un-English term is used for “working members, men and women of a peasant family or household” as opposed to hired labourers.—Ed. Eng. ed.

34

V. I. L E N I N

Comparing the last column with the data of family composition, we see that Postnikov has somewhat understated the number of workers in the bottom and overstated it in the top groups. As his purpose was to prove that the number of workers per given area under crops decreases as the size of the farm increases, his approximate estimates succeeded in minimising rather than exaggerating this decrease. Having made this preliminary calculation, Postnikov gives the following table showing the relation between the crop area and the number of working persons, draught animals, and then population generally for different groups of peasants (p. 117): Per 100 dess. of crop area

Cultivating ” ” ” ”

up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” 10 to 25 ” 25 to 50 ” over 50 ” Average

Area under crops per pair of draught animals

Households

7.1 dess. 8.2 ” 10.2 ” 12.5 ” 14.5 ”

28.7 12.9 6.1 2.9 1.3

10. 9 dess.

5.4

Per- Work- Number of sons ers draught (with hired animals labourers)

136 28.5 67 12.6 41.2 9.3 25.5 7 18 6.8 36.6

9

28.2 25 20 16.6 14 18.3

“Thus, with the increase in the size of the farm and in the area cultivated by the peasant, the expenditure on the maintenance of labour-power, human and animal, that prime item of expenditure in agriculture, progressively decreases, and among the groups that cultivate large areas, drops to nearly one-half per dessiatine under crops of what it is among the groups with small cultivated areas” (p. 117). The proposition that the maintenance of working persons and draught animals is the predominant item of expenditure in agriculture is confirmed by the author later when he cites the detailed budget of a Mennonite 7 farm: of the total expenditure, 24.3% is general expenditure on the farm; 23.6% is expenditure on draught animals and 52.1% on working persons (p. 284). Postnikov attributes great importance to his conclusion that the productivity of labour increases with the increase

35

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

in the size of the farm (as is shown from the above quotation, taken from his preface); and, indeed, one cannot but admit its importance—firstly, for a study of the economic life of our peasantry and the character of the farming of the various groups; and, secondly, in connection with the general question of the relation between small-scale and largescale farming. This latter question has been greatly confused by many writers, the chief cause of the confusion being that comparison was made between dissimilar farms, existing in different social conditions and differing in the type of farming; for example, farms whose income was derived from the output of agricultural produce were compared with farms whose income was derived from exploiting other households’ need of land (e.g., peasant and landlord farms in the period immediately following the Reform of 1861). 8 Postnikov is entirely free of this error and does not forget the first rule of all comparisons, namely, that the things compared must be of a similar order. The author gives a more detailed proof of his proposition in respect of the Taurida uyezds, and cites data, firstly, for each uyezd separately and, secondly, for the Russian population separately, or, rather, for its most numerous group, the former state peasants (pp. 273-74). Dessiatines under crops per pair of draught animals For the uyezds in general

Cultivating up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ” Average

In the group of former state peasants

Berdyansk

Melitopol

Dnieper

Berdyansk

Melitopol

Dnieper

8.9 8.9 10.2 11.6 13.5

8.7 8.7 10.6 12.4 13.8

4.3 6.8 9.7 12.3 15.7

— 8.9 10.3 12.3 13.7

— 9.1 10.9 12.8 14.3

— 6.8 9.6 11.9 15

10.7

11.3

10.1

—

—

—

The conclusion reached is the same, that “on the smallscale farm the relative number of draught animals per given crop area is one and a half times or double the number on the ‘full’ peasant farm. The same law is revealed by the

36

V. I. L E N I N

house-to-house census in the case of all the other, smaller, groups—former landlords’ peasants, tenant farmers, etc.— and in all localities, even in the smallest, confined to one volost or even one village” (p. 274). The relation between size of crop area and farm expenditure is also found to be unfavourable for the small farms in respect of another type of expenditure—the maintenance of implements and productive animals. We have already seen how rapidly both these items increase per farm as we proceed from the bottom group to the top one. If we calculate the quantity of implements per given crop area, we find that it decreases from the bottom to the top group (p. 318): Per 100 dessiatines of crop area

Cultivating ” ” ” ”

up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” 10 to 25 ” 25 to 50 ” over 50 ”

For the three uyezds

Productive animals

Iron ploughs a drill ploughs

42 head 28.8 ” 24.9 ” 23.7 ” 25.8 ”

4.7 5.9 6.5 4.8 3.8

25.5 head

5.4

Waggons

10 9 7

5.7 4.3 6.5

“This table shows that as the crop area per household increases, the biggest implements (for cultivation and cartage) progressively decrease in number per given crop area, and, consequently, on the farms of the top groups the cost of maintaining cultivation and cartage implements should be relatively less per dessiatine. The group with up to 10 dessiatines per household under crops constitutes an exception: there are comparatively fewer farm implements than in the next group, with its 16 dessiatines per household under crops, but that is only because many of the peasants do not work with their own implements, but with hired ones, which does not, however, in any way reduce the expenditure on implements” (p. 318). “Zemstvo statistics,” says Postnikov, “prove incontrovertibly that the larger the size of a peasant farm, the smaller the number of implements, workers and draught animals employed on a given cultivated area” (p. 162).

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

37

“In previous chapters,” says Postnikov further on, “it has been shown that in the Taurida uyezds this phenomenon occurs in all the groups of peasants and in all localities. It can be seen in peasant farming, as the Zemstvo statistics show, in other gubernias as well, where agriculture is also the main branch of peasant economy. This phenomenon, therefore, is widespread and assumes the form of a law, economically of great importance, for it robs small crop farming, to a considerable degree, of all economic sense” (p. 313). This last remark of Postnikov’s is somewhat premature: to prove the inevitability of small farms being ousted by large ones, it is not enough to demonstrate the greater advantage of the latter (the lower price of the product); the predominance of money (more precisely, commodity) economy over natural economy must also be established; under natural economy, when the product is consumed by the producer himself and is not sent to the market, the cheap product does not encounter the more costly product on the market, and is therefore unable to oust it. But of that more anon. To prove that the above-established law is applicable to all Russia, Postnikov takes those uyezds for which the Zemstvo statistics contain a detailed economic classification of the population, and calculates the cultivated area per pair of draught animals and per working person in the various groups. The conclusion is the same: “where the peasant farm is a small one the cultivated area has to bear a cost of maintaining labour-power one and a half times to twice as large as when the farm is of a more adequate size” (p. 316). This is true for both Perm (p. 314) and Voronezh gubernias, for both Saratov and Chernigov gubernias (p. 315), so that Postnikov has undoubtedly proved this law to be applicable to all Russia. Let us now pass to the question of the “incomes and expenditures” (Chapter IX) of the different groups of peasant farms and of their relation to the market. “The territory of every farm that is an independent unit,” says Postnikov, “consists of the following four parts: one part produces food for the sustenance of the working family and of the labourers who live on the farm; this, in the

38

V. I. L E N I N

narrow sense, is the food area of the farm. Another part provides fodder for the cattle working on the farm, and may be called the fodder area. A third part consists of the farmyard, roads, ponds, etc., and of that part of the crop area that produces seed; it may be called the farm-service area, as it serves the needs of the whole farm without distinction. Lastly, the fourth part produces grain and plants destined, either raw or processed, for sale on the market; this is the market or commercial area of the farm. The division of the territory into these four parts is determined in each separate farm, not by the crops grown, but by the immediate purpose of their cultivation. “The cash income of the farm is determined by the commercial part of its territory, and the larger the latter and the greater the relative value of the produce obtained from it, the greater the demand made by the farmers on the market and the larger the amount of labour the country can maintain outside of agriculture within the vicinity of its market; the greater, too, is the state (fiscal) and cultural importance of agriculture to the country, and the greater, too, are the net income of the cultivator himself and the resources at his disposal for farm expenses and for improvements” (p. 257). This argument of Postnikov’s would be perfectly true, if one, fairly substantial, correction were made: the author speaks of the importance of the farm’s commercial area to the country in general, whereas this can obviously be said only of a country where money economy predominates, where the greater part of the produce assumes the form of commodities. To forget this condition, to consider it self-evident, and to omit a precise investigation of how far it is applicable to the given country, would be to fall into the error of vulgar political economy. To single out the market area from the farm as a whole is very important. For the home market it is by no means the producer’s income in general (by which the level of his prosperity is determined) that is significant, but exclusively his income in cash. The producer’s possession of monetary resources is not determined by his degree of prosperity: the peasant who obtains from his plot of land sufficient produce to satisfy his own requirements fully, but who engages

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

39

in natural economy, is well-off, but he possesses no monetary resources; on the other hand, the half-ruined peasant who obtains from his plot of land only a small part of the grain he needs and who secures the rest (although in a lesser amount and of poorer quality) by casual earnings, is not well-off, but possesses monetary resources. It is clear from this that no discussion on the importance to the market of peasant farms and the incomes they yield can be of any value if not based on a calculation of the cash part of the income. In order to determine the size of these four parts of the crop area on the farms of the different groups of peasants, Postnikov first estimates the annual consumption of grain, taking the round figure of two chetverts * of grain per head (p. 259), which means two-thirds of a dessiatine per head out of the crop area. He then estimates the fodder area at one and a half dessiatines per horse, and the seed area at 6% of the total under crops, and arrives at the following results ** (p. 319): 100 dess. under crops consist of Farmservice

Cultivating up to 5 dess. 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ”

6 6 6 6 6

Food Fodder Commercial areas

90.7 44.7 27.5 17 12

42.3 37.5 30 25 21

—39 # 1 1 .8 36.5 52 61

Cash income Per dess. Per under housecrops hold (rubles)

— 3.77 11.68 16.64 19.52

— 30 191 574 1.500

“The difference indicated in the cash income of the various groups,” says Postnikov, “is sufficient to illustrate the importance of the size of the farms; but, actually, this difference between the incomes of the various groups from cropping should be even greater, for it must be assumed that the top groups obtain larger harvests per dessiatine and secure better prices for the grain they sell.

* A chetvert equals ** To determine the

about six bushels.—Ed. Eng. ed. cash income Postnikov proceeded as follows: he assumed that the entire commercial area is sown to the dearest kind of grain—wheat—and, knowing the average crop and prevailing prices, he calculated the value of the produce obtainable from this area.

40

V. I. L E N I N

“In this record of income obtained, we have included the cultivated, and not the total area of the farm, for we have no precise data on the way in which the peasant farms of the Taurida uyezds make use of other farmland for various kinds of livestock; but inasmuch as the cash income of the South-Russian peasant, whose sole pursuit is cropping, is almost entirely determined by the crop area, the above figures fairly accurately depict the difference in the cash income from farming between the various groups of peasants. These figures show how markedly this income changes with the size of the area under crops. A family with 75 dessiatines under crops obtains a cash income of as much as 1,500 rubles a year; a family with 34 @ dessiatines under crops obtains 574 rubles a year, whereas one with 16 # dessiatines under crops obtains only 191 rubles. A family which cultivates 8 dessiatines obtains only 30 rubles, a sum insufficient to cover the cash expenditure of the farm without outside earnings. Of course, the figures quoted do not show the net income of the farms; to obtain this we have to deduct the expenditure of the household on taxes, implements, buildings, the purchase of clothing, footwear, etc. But such expenditure does not increase proportionately as the size of the farm increases. Expenditure on maintaining the family increases in proportion to its size, and the latter, as the table shows, increases far more slowly than the crop area of the various groups. As to total farm expenditure (payment of land tax and rental, repair of buildings and implements), they, at any rate, do not increase more than proportionately to the size of farms, whereas the gross cash income from the farm, as the previous table shows, increases in more than direct proportion to the size of the crop area. What is more, all these expenses are very small compared with the main item of farm expenditure, the maintenance of labour-power. We are thus able to formulate the rule that, in peasant economy, the net proceeds per dessiatine from cropping grow progressively smaller as the size of the farm decreases” (p. 320). We thus see from Postnikov’s figures that peasant farming in the different groups varies substantially with respect to the market: the top groups (with more than 25 dessiatines under crops per household) conduct what is

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

41

already commercial farming; they grow grain for the income it provides. In the bottom groups, on the contrary, cropping does not cover the family’s essential needs (this applies to those who cultivate up to 10 dessiatines per household); if we make an exact calculation of all farm expenditure we shall most certainly find that in these groups the farm is run at a loss. It is also very interesting to make use of data cited by Postnikov to settle the problem of the relationship between the splitting of the peasantry into different groups and the extent of the market demand. We know that the extent of this demand depends on the size of the commercial area and that the latter becomes greater as the size of the farm increases; but parallel to this increase in the size of the farm in the top groups there is a decrease in its size in the bottom groups. As to the number of farms, the bottom groups contain twice as many as the top: the former constitute 40% in the Taurida uyezds, the latter only 20%. Do we not get the result, in general, that the above-mentioned economic split decreases the extent of the market demand? Properly speaking, we are entitled to answer this question in the negative on purely a priori grounds: the fact is that in the bottom groups, the farm is so small that the family’s needs cannot be fully covered by agriculture; to avoid dying of starvation, the members of these bottom groups have to take their labour-power to the market, where its sale provides them with monetary resources and thus counterbalances (to some degree) the lesser demand due to the smaller size of the farms. But Postnikov’s data enable us to give a more precise answer to the problem raised. Let us take some crop area, say, 1,600 dessiatines, and let us imagine it divided in two ways: firstly, among an economically homogeneous peasantry, and, secondly, among peasants split up into different groups such as we find in the Taurida uyezds today. In the first case, assuming that an average peasant farm has 16 dessiatines under crops (as is actually the case in the Taurida uyezds), we get 100 farms that fully cover their needs by agriculture. The demand made on the market will equal 1918 100= 19,100 rubles. Second case: the 1,600 dessiatines under crops are divided among the 100 households differently, exactly as the crop area is actu-

FROM MARX TO MAO




NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION

42

V. I. L E N I N

ally divided among the peasants of the Taurida uyezds: 8 households have no crop area at all; 12 cultivate 4 dessiatines each; 20—8 dessiatines each; 40—16 dessiatines each; 17—34 dessiatines each, and 3—75 dessiatines (a total of 1,583 dessiatines, i.e., even a little less than 1,600 dessiatines). With such a distribution, a very considerable section of the peasants (40%) will not be in a position to derive a sufficient return from their land to cover all their needs. The extent of the monetary demand made on the market, counting only the farms with over 5 dessiatines under crops per household, will be as follows: (20 8 30)# (40 8 191)# (17 8 574)# (3 8 1,500)= 21,350 rubles. We thus find that, despite the omission of 20 households [undoubtedly these also have a cash income, but it is not obtained from the sale of their produce], and despite the reduction of the crop area to 1,535 dessiatines, the total monetary demand on the market is higher. 9 It has already been said that the peasants of the bottom economic groups are forced to sell their labour-power; the members of the top groups, on the contrary, have to buy it, for the workers in their own families are inadequate for the cultivation of their large crop areas. We must now dwell in greater detail on this important fact. Postnikov apparently does not class it under the “new economic developments in peasant life” (at least, he does not mention it in his preface, where he sums up the results of his work), but it is deserving of far more attention than the introduction of machines or the extension of cropping by the well-to-do peasants. “The more affluent peasantry in the Taurida uyezds,” the author says, “generally employ hired labourers to a considerable extent and farm an area that far exceeds the working capacity of the families themselves. Thus, in the three uyezds the percentage of families in all categories of peasants employing hired labourers is as follows: Cultivating no land . . . up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ”

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . .

. 3.8% . 2.5 . 2.6 . 8.7 . 34.7 . 64.1

Average. . . . .

12.9%

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

43

“These figures show that it is mostly the well-to-do farmers with the larger cultivated areas that employ hired labourers” (p. 144). Comparing the data already given on family composition by groups without hired labourers (for the three uyezds separately) and with hired labourers (for the three uyezds together), we find that by hiring labourers, farmers who sow from 25 to 50 dessiatines per household increase the number of hands on their farms by about one-third (from 1.8 or 1.9 working persons per family to 2.4), while farmers with over 50 dessiatines under crops per household almost double the number of their workers (from 2.3 to 5); even more than double according to the estimate of the author, who considers that they have to hire 8,241 workers (p. 115), while they have only 7,129 of their own. That the bottom groups have to release workers on the side in very large numbers is clear from the very fact that cropping cannot provide them with the amount of produce which they need for their own subsistence. Unfortunately, we have no precise data as to the number of persons released for outside work. An indirect indication of this number may be found in the number of householders who lease their allotments; above we have cited Postnikov’s statement to the effect that about one-third of the inhabitants of the Taurida uyezds do not exploit their allotment land to the full. IV It can be seen from the data given above that Postnikov has fully proved his point on the “tremendous diversity” in the economic status of the various households. This diversity applies not only to the property status of the peasants and the size of the areas they cultivate, but even to the character of the farming in the different groups. That is still not all. It turns out that the terms “diversity” and “differentiation” are inadequate for a full description of the phenomenon. When one peasant owns one draught animal and another 10, we call that differentiation; but when one rents scores of dessiatines of land above the allotment that satisfies his needs, with the sole object of deriving profit from

44

V. I. L E N I N

its exploitation, thus depriving another peasant of the opportunity of renting land which he requires in order to feed his family, we obviously are faced with something much bigger; we have to call that sort of thing “strife” p. 323), a “struggle of economic interests” (p. XXXII). Although he employs these terms, Postnikov does not fully appreciate their importance; nor does he see that the terms themselves are inadequate. To rent allotment land from the impoverished section of the population, and to hire as a labourer the peasant who has ceased to run his own farm is something more than mere strife—it is downright exploitation. Recognising the profound economic strife among the peasantry of today, we can no longer restrict ourselves to just dividing the peasants into several strata according to the property they possess. Such a division would suffice if the diversity mentioned above amounted to mere quantitative differences. But that is not so. If, in the case of one section of the peasants, the aim of agriculture is commercial profit and the result is a large cash income, whereas in the case of another, agriculture cannot cover even the family’s essential needs; if the top peasant groups base their improved farming on the ruin of the bottom groups; if the prosperous peasantry employ hired labour on a considerable scale, while the poor are compelled to resort to the sale of their labour-power—these are undoubtedly qualitative differences, and our task must now be to classify the peasantry according to differences in the character of the farming itself (meaning by character of farming peculiarities not of a technical but of an economic order). Postnikov has devoted too little attention to these latter differences. Therefore, while he recognises the need for a “more general division of the population into groups” (p. 110) and attempts to make such a division, this attempt, as we shall soon see, cannot be considered quite successful. “To achieve a more general division of the population into economic groups,” says Postnikov, “we shall adopt a different criterion which, although not of uniform economic significance in all localities, is more in conformity with the division into groups made by the peasants themselves and that has also been noted in all uyezds by the Zemstvo

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

45

statisticians. This division is made according to the degree of the farmers’ independence in the conduct of their farms, depending on the number of draught animals owned” (p. 110). “At the present time the peasants of the South-Russian region may be divided, according to the degree of their economic independence and at the same time their methods of farming, into the three following main groups: “1) Peasant households owning a full team of animals, i.e., with enough animals to work a plough or some other ploughing implement and who can cultivate their land with their own animals without having to hire or to yoke 10 with other peasants. When the implement used is a plough or a drill plough the peasant has two, three or more pairs of draught animals and, correspondingly, three or at least two adult workers and a part-time worker in the household. “2) Peasants with insufficient animals, or yokers, i.e., peasants who yoke with one another for field work because their own animals do not suffice for independent harnessing. Such peasants have one or one and a half, in some cases even two pairs of draught animals and, correspondingly, one or two adult workers. Where the soil is heavy and a plough (or a drill plough) needs three pairs of draught animals the peasants invariably yoke with each other, even if they have two pairs of draught animals of their own. “3) ‘Footers,’ or householders who have no animals whatever or have one (more often than not a horse, as oxen are generally kept in pairs and harnessed only in pairs). They work by hiring animals from others, or let their land for a part of the harvest and have no cultivated land of their own. “This classification of the peasants according to an economic criterion fundamental to peasant life, such as in the present instance the number of draught animals and the manner of harnessing them, is usually made by the peasants themselves. But there are considerable variations of it, both within the bounds of each separate group enumerated above, and in the division of the groups themselves” (p. 121). These groups constitute the following percentages of the total number of households (p. 125):

46

V. I. L E N I N

II

III

Working with own animals

Working on yoking basis

Working with hired animals

With no land under crops

37 32.7 43

44.6 46.8 34.8

11.7 13 13.2

6.7 7.5 9

« ’ ’ ‘ ’ ’ »

I

Berdyansk Uyezd Melitopol ” Dnieper ”

Side by side with this table, the author gives a classification of households according to the number of draught animals they own, in order to show how the animals are distributed in the uyezds described: Percentage of total number of households Draught animals (per household)

Berdyansk Uyezd Melitopol ” Dnieper ”

4 or more

2 or 3

one

none

36.2 34.4 44.3

41.6 44.7 36.6

7.2 5.3 5.1

15 15.6 14

Consequently, in the Taurida uyezds, a full team consists of no less than four draught animals. This classification, as made by Postnikov, cannot be considered altogether happy, first of all because marked differences are to be observed within each of the three groups: “In the group of householders owning a team of draught animals,” the author says, “there is considerable diversity evident in South Russia: side by side with the large numbers of animals of the well-to-do peasants there are the small teams of the poorer peasants. The former, in their turn, may be subdivided into those with full working teams (6 to 8 or more animals) and those with less than a full team (4 to 6 animals).... The category of ‘footer’ householders also presents considerable variety in degree of affluence” (p. 124). Another inconvenience in the division adopted by Postnikov is, as we have already indicated, that the Zemstvo statistics do not classify the population according to the number of draught animals owned, but according to cultivated area. In order, therefore, to be able to express

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

47

accurately the property status of the various groups, this classification according to cultivated area has to be used. On this basis Postnikov also divides the population into three groups: householders who are small cultivators— with up to 10 dessiatines under crops, or none at all; middle cultivators—with 10 to 25 dessiatines; and large cultivators— with over 25 dessiatines per household under crops. The author calls the first group “poor,” the second middle, and the third well-to-do. In respect of the size of these groups, Postnikov says: “In general, among the Taurida peasants (excluding the colonists), the large cultivators constitute about one-sixth of the total number of households; those with medium-sized crop areas about 40%, while the households with small crop areas and those with none at all constitute a little over 40%. Taking the population of the Taurida uyezds as a whole (including the colonists), the large cultivators constitute one-fifth, or about 20%, the middle 40%, and the small cultivators and those with no tillage about 40%” (p. 112). Hence, the composition of the groups is altered very slightly by the inclusion of the German colonists, so that no error will arise from using the general data for a whole uyezd. We now have to describe as accurately as possible the economic status of each of these groups separately, and to try to ascertain the extent and causes of the economic strife among the peasantry. Postnikov did not set himself this task; that is why the data he quotes are markedly very scattered and his general observations on the groups are not definite enough. Let us begin with the bottom group, the poor peasants, to which two-fifths of the population of the Taurida uyezds belong. The number of draught animals (the chief instrument of production in agriculture) owned by this group is the best indication of how poor they really are. In the three uyezds of Taurida Gubernia, out of a total of 263,589 draught animals, the bottom group possess (p. 117) 43,625, or 17% in all, which is 2 # times less than the average. The data on the percentage of households possessing no draught animals

48

V. I. L E N I N

were given above (80%, 48% and 12% for the three subdivisions of the bottom group). On the basis of these data, Postnikov arrived at the conclusion that “the percentage of householders who possess no animals of their own is considerable only in the groups with no land under crops or with crop areas of up to 10 dessiatines per household” (p. 135). The crop area of this group corresponds to the number of animals: on their own land they cultivate 146,114 dessiatines out of the total of 962,933 dessiatines (in the three uyezds), that is, 15%. The addition of rented land raises the sown area to 174,496 dessiatines; but since the sown area of the other groups also increases and does so to a larger extent than in the bottom group, the result is that the area cultivated by the bottom group constitutes only 12% of the total; in other words, there is only one-eighth of the cultivated area to more than three-eighths of the population. If we remember that it is the medium-sized area cultivated by the Taurida peasant which the author regards as normal (i.e., covering all the family’s needs) we can easily see how this group, with a sown area 3 # times less than the average, is deprived of its just share. It is quite natural that, under these circumstances, the farming of this group is in a very bad way. We have already seen that 33% to 39% of the population in the Taurida uyezds—consequently, the overwhelming majority of the bottom group—have no ploughing implements whatever. Lack of implements compels the peasants to give up the land, to lease their allotments: Postnikov estimates that such lessors (whose farms are undoubtedly already utterly ruined) comprise about one-third of the population, that is, again a considerable majority of the poor group. Let us note in passing that this practice of “selling” allotments (to borrow the customary expression of the peasants) has been reflected in Zemstvo statistics everywhere, and on a very large scale. The periodicals which have drawn attention to this fact have already managed to invent a remedy for it—the inalienability of allotments. Postnikov quite rightly questions the effectiveness of such measures, which reveal in their authors a purely bureaucratic faith in the power of the decrees of the authorities. There can be no

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doubt,” he says, “that merely to prohibit the leasing of land will not eliminate it when it is so deeply rooted in the present economic structure of peasant life. A peasant who has no implements and means with which to run his own farm is virtually unable to make use of his allotment and has to lease it to other peasants who are in a position to farm it. The direct prohibition of the leasing of land will force the peasant to do it surreptitiously, without control, and most likely on terms that are worse for the lessor than at present, since he is forced to lease his land. Furthermore, allotments will increasingly be leased through the village courts 11 in payment of taxation arrears, and such leasing is the least advantageous for the poor peasant” (p. 140). Absolute economic decline is to be observed in the case of all the members of the poor group. “At bottom,” says Postnikov, “there is no great difference in economic status between the householders who sow nothing and those who sow little, cultivating their land with hired animals. The former lease the whole of their land to their fellow villagers, the latter only part; but both groups either serve as labourers for their fellow villagers, or engage in outside employments, mostly agricultural, while continuing to live at home. Hence, both these categories of peasants— those who sow nothing and those who sow little—may be examined together; both belong to the class of peasants who are losing their farms, who in most cases are ruined or on the verge of ruin, and are without the livestock and implements with which to work their farms” (p. 135). “While the non-farming, non-cultivating households are in most cases those that are already ruined,” says Postnikov a little later on, “those that cultivate little, that lease their land, are candidates for membership of that category. Every severe harvest failure, or chance calamity such as fire, loss of horses, etc., drives some of the householders out of this group into the category of non-farming peasants and farm labourers. A householder who, from one cause or another, loses his draught animals, takes the first step along the road to ruin. Cultivating the land with hired animals is too casual and unsystematic, and usually leads to a reduction of cropping. Such a muzhik is refused credit by the village loan-and-savings societies and by his fellow villag-

50

V. I. L E N I N

ers” [a footnote says: “In the Taurida uyezds there are very many loan-and-savings societies in the big villages, operating with funds borrowed from the State Bank; but it is only the rich and well-to-do householders who obtain loans from them”]; “when he does get a loan, it is usually on worse terms than those obtained by the ‘thriving’ peasants. ‘How can you lend him anything if he has nothing to pay with?’ the peasants say. Once he gets involved in debt, the first stroke of ill luck robs him of his land too, especially if he is also in arrears with his taxes” (p. 139). The extent of the decline of farming among the peasants of the poor group can best be seen from the fact that the author does not even attempt to answer the question of exactly how they run their farms. In the case of farms that cultivate less than 10 dessiatines per household, he says, “the conditions of farming are too fortuitous for it to be described by any definite system” (p. 278). The characteristics of peasant farming in the bottom group that have been cited are, despite their considerable number, still quite inadequate; they are exclusively negative in character, although there surely must be positive characteristics. All we have heard so far is that the peasants of this group cannot be regarded as independent agriculturists, because their farms are in absolute decline, their cultivated area is far too inadequate and because, lastly, their farms are run haphazardly. “Only the prosperous and well-to-do farmers, who are not in need of seed,” remark the statisticians in describing Bakhmut Uyezd, “can observe any sort of system in sowing crops; but the poor peasants sow whatever happens to be on hand, anywhere and anyhow” (p. 278). Nevertheless, the existence of all this mass of the peasantry embraced by the bottom group (in the three Taurida uyezds, over 30,000 households and over 200,000 persons of both sexes) cannot be accidental. If they do not live on the produce of their own farms, how do they live? Chiefly by the sale of their labour-power. We have seen above that Postnikov says of this group of peasants that they live by farm-labouring and other outside earnings. In view of the almost total absence of handicraft industries in the South, such earnings are mostly agricultural which means, in fact, that the peasants are hiring

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themselves for farm work. To prove in greater detail that the chief feature of the economy of the bottom group of peasants is the sale of their labour-power, let us proceed to examine this group according to the categories into which they are divided in the Zemstvo statistics. As to the nonfarming householders, nothing need be said of them: they are farm labourers pure and simple. In the second category we have cultivators with crop areas of up to 5 dessiatines per household (the average is 3.5 dessiatines). The division of the cultivated area, given above, into farm-service, fodder, food and commercial, shows us that an area of this size is altogether inadequate. “The first group, with a cultivated area up to 5 dessiatines per household,” says Postnikov, “have no market, or commercial, area at all; they can only exist with the help of outside earnings, obtained by working as farm labourers, or by other means” (p. 319). There remains the last category—the farmers with 5 to 10 dessiatines of cultivatedland per household. The question is: what, among the peasants of this group, is the relation of independent farming to the so-called “earnings”? For a precise answer to this question, we should have several typical peasant budgets relating to the farmers of this group. Postnikov fully admits the need for and importance of budget data, but points out that the “collection of such data is extremely difficult, and in many cases simply beyond the power of the statisticians” (p. 107). We find it very difficult to agree to this view: Moscow statisticians have collected several extremely interesting and detailed budgets (see Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia. Section on Economic Statistics, Vols. VI and VII); in several uyezds of Voronezh Gubernia, as the author himself indicates, budget data have even been collected on a house-to-house basis. It is a great pity that the budget material Postnikov himself gives is very inadequate: he cites the budgets of seven German colonists and of only one Russian peasant; moreover, all are those of big cultivators (the minimum—in the case of the Russian—is 39 @ dessiatines sown), that is, all belong to a group of whose economy one may obtain a clear enough idea from the facts contained in the Zemstvo statistics. Expressing his regret that he was “unable during his

52

V. I. L E N I N

tour to gather a larger number of peasant budgets,” Postnikov says that “to give an exact appreciation of these budgets is, in general, no easy matter. The Tauridians are quite frank in giving economic information, but often enough they themselves do not know the exact figures of their income and expenditure. The peasants recall with greater accuracy the general amount of their expenditure, or the biggest items of income and expenditure, but small amounts almost invariably escape their memory” (p. 288). It would, however, be better to collect a few budgets, even without minor details, than, as the author has done, to collect “about 90 descriptions and an evaluation” of the economic situation, which is elucidated with sufficient clarity in the Zemstvo house-to-house censuses. In the absence of budgets, only two kinds of data are at our disposal for determining the character of the economy of the group under review: firstly, Postnikov’s estimates of the cultivated area per household necessary to feed an average family; and, secondly, data on the division of the cultivated area into four parts, and on the average cash expenditure (per family per year) of the local peasants. On the basis of detailed estimates of the cultivated area required for a family’s food, for seed and for fodder, Postnikov arrives at the following final conclusion: “A peasant family of average size and well-being, living exclusively by farming and balancing its income and expenditure without deficit, needs, given average harvests, 4 dessiatines to feed 6 @ members of the family, 4 @ dessiatines to feed 3 draught horses, 1 @ dessiatines for seed supply, and 6 to 8 dessiatines for the production of grain for sale, or in all, 16 to 18 dessiatines under crops. ... The average Tauridian has about 18 dessiatines under crops per household, but 40% of the population of the three Taurida uyezds have less than 10 dessiatines per household; and if they are nevertheless able to engage in farming, it is only because part of their income is derived from outside employments and by leasing part of their land. The economic position of this section of the population is abnormal and insecure, because in the majority of cases they are unable to accumulate the reserve to tide them over a difficult period” (p. 272).

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

53

As the average cultivated area per household in the group under review is 8 dessiatines, i.e., less than half the area required (11 dessiatines), we are entitled to conclude that the peasants of this group derive the greater part of their income from “employments,” i.e., from the sale of their labour. Here is another calculation: according to Postnikov’s data, quoted above, on the division of the cultivated area, out of 8 dessiatines under crops, 0.48 dessiatines will go for seed; 3 dessiatines for fodder (in this group there are 2, not 3, draught animals per household); and 3.576 dessiatines for the food of the family (its size is also below the average— about 5 @ persons, not 6 @ ); so that less than one dessiatine (0.944) remains for the commercial area, the income from which the author estimates at 30 rubles. But the amount of a Tauridian’s essential cash expenditure is much greater. It is much easier to collect information on the amount of cash expenditure than on budgets, says the author, because the peasants themselves often make calculations of this sort, These calculations show that: “In the case of a family of average size, i.e., consisting of the working husband, the wife and 4 young children or adolescents, if they farm their own land (roughly about 20 dessiatines) and do not resort to renting, the essential cash expenditure, as estimated by the Tauridians, amounts to between 200 and 250 rubles per annum. A cash expenditure of 150 to 180 rubles is considered to be the minimum that a small family must make, even if they stint themselves in everything. An annual income of less than this amount is considered quite inadequate, for in these parts a working man and his wife can, by farm-labouring, earn 120 rubles a year, with board and lodging, without incurring the expense of maintaining livestock, implements and so forth, and, in addition, can get ‘extras’ from land leased to fellow villagers” (p. 289). As the group under examination is below the average, we take the minimum, not the average, cash expenditure, and the lowest figure of this minimum at that— 150 rubles—which has to be derived from “employments.” According to this calculation, a peasant of the group under examination derives from his own farming a total of 117.5

54

V. I. L E N I N

rubles (30 # 87.5 * ), and from the sale of his labour-power 120 rubles. Consequently, we again find that by independent farming the peasants of this group can only cover less than half of their minimum expenditure. ** Thus an examination of the character of the economy in all the subdivisions of the bottom group leads us to the unquestionable conclusion that although the majority of the peasants do cultivate small plots, the sale of their labourpower is their principal source of livelihood. All the peasants of this group are hired labourers rather than independent farmers. Postnikov did not raise this question of the character of the economy of the bottom group of peasants, and did not elucidate the relation of outside employments to the peasant’s own farming—and that is a big defect in his work. As a result, he does not adequately explain the, at first glance, strange fact that although the peasants of the bottom group have too little land of their own, they abandon it, lease it; as a result the important fact, that the means of production (i.e., land and implements) possessed by the bottom group of peasants are quantitatively far below the average, is not linked up with the general character of their

* A food area of 3 @ dessiatines will yield 25 rubles in produce per dessiatine (25 8 3.5 = 87.5)—Postnikov’s calculation, p. 272. ** The calculations made by Mr. Yuzhakov in Russkaya Mysl, 12 No. 9, 1885 (“Quotas for People’s Landownership”) fully corroborate this conclusion. He considers that the food norm, i.e., the lowest norm in Taurida Gubernia, is an allotment of 9 dessiatines under crops per household. But Mr. Yuzhakov sees the allotment as covering only the cereal foods and taxation, and assumes that the other expenditures will be covered by outside earnings. The budgets given in the Zemstvo statistics show that the latter expenditures constitute over half the total. For example, in Voronezh Gubernia the average expenditure of a peasant family is 495.39 rubles, reckoning expenditure both in cash and kind. Of this sum, 109.10 rubles go for the maintenance of livestock [N. V. Yuzhakov sees the maintenance of livestock as coming from hay-fields and other grounds, and not from arable land], 135.80 rubles for vegetable food and taxes, and 250.49 rubles for other expenditure—clothing, implements, rent, various household requirements, etc. [24 budgets in Statistical Returns for Ostrogozshsk Uyezd]. In Moscow Gubernia, the average annual expenditure per family is 348.83 rubles, of which 156.03 go for cereal foods and taxes, and 192.80 for other expenditure. [Average of 8 budgets collected by Moscow statisticians—loc. cit.]

NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN PEASANT LIFE

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farming. Since the average quantity of means of production, as we have seen, is only just enough to satisfy the essential needs of the family, it necessarily and inevitably follows from this fact—the fact of the poor peasants being deprived of their fair share—that they must seek means of production belonging to others to which to apply their labour, i.e., they must sell themselves. Let us now pass to the second group—the middle one, also embracing 40% of the population. Under this category come farmers with a cultivated area of from 10 to 25 dessiatines per household. The term “middle” is fully applicable to the members of this group, with the reservation, however, that their means of production are somewhat (slightly) below the average: the cultivated area per household is 16.4 dessiatines, as against the average of 17 dessiatines for all peasants; livestock—7.3 head per household, as against an average of 7.6 (draught animals—3.2, as against an average of 3.1); total tillage per household—17 to 18 dessiatines (allotment, purchased, and rented), as against an average of 20 to 21 dessiatines for the uyezds. A comparison of the number of dessiatines under crops per household with the norm given by Postnikov, shows that the farming of their own land by this group yields them only just enough for their subsistence. All these facts, it would seem, should lead us to think that the farming of this group of peasants is the most stable: the peasant covers all his expenses by it; he works not for profit but only to satisfy primary needs. As a matter of fact, however, we see the very opposite: the farming of this group of peasants is distinguished by its very considerable instability. Firstly, an average cultivated area of 16 dessiatines is shown to be adequate. Consequently, peasants with 10 to 16 dessiatines under crops do not cover all their expenses by farming and are also obliged to resort to outside employments. From Postnikov’s approximate estimates quoted above, we see that this group hires 2,846 workers, whereas it releases 3,389, or 543 more. Hence, about half the farms in the group are not fully provided for. Further, in this group the number of draught animals per household is 3.2, whereas, as we have seen, the number needed for a team is four. Consequently, a large number

56

V. I. L E N I N

of the households in this group have insufficient animals of their own with which to cultivate their land, and have to resort to yoking. The yokers in this group likewise constitute no less than one-half of the total: we may draw this conclusion from the fact that the proportion of households owning working teams is about 40%, of which 20% go to the prosperous upper group, the remaining 20% belonging to the middle group, 90 that no less than half of the middle group do not own a working team. Postnikov does not give the exact number of yokers in this group. Turning to the Zemstvo statistical abstracts we find the following data (for two uyezds): *

Melitopol Uyezd Dnieper Uyezd

Dess.

With Hired By other animals means

Dess.

Households

Dess.

By yoking

Households

With own animals

Households

Dess.

Distribution of the number of dessiatines cultivated

Households

Households

Total in group cultivating 10 to 25 dess.

Dess.

13,789 226,389.21 4,218 79,726.55 9,201 141,483.26 321 4,405.8 49 773.3 8,234 137,343.75 4,029 71,125.2 3,835 51,159.05 320 4,352.5 50 707.25

Thus, in the middle group of the two uyezds, a minority of the households cultivate their land with their own animals: in Melitopol Uyezd less than one-third of the households; in Dnieper Uyezd less than one-half. Hence, the number of yokers estimated above for all the three uyezds (one-half) is, if anything, too low and certainly not exaggerated. Of course, the peasant’s inability to farm with animals of his own is in itself sufficiently indicative of the instability of his farm; but, as an illustration, let us quote

* Statistical Returns for Melitopol Uyezd (Appendix to Returns for Taurida Gubernia, Vol. I), Simferopol, 1885, p. B 195. Statistical Returns for Dnieper Uyezd (Returns for Taurida Gubernia, Vol. II) Simferopol, 1886, p. B 123.

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the description of the yoking system given by Postnikov, who, unfortunately, pays too little attention to this phenomenon, interesting as it is economically and from the standpoint of life and customs. “Among the peasants who work on a yoking basis,” says Postnikov, “the standard working area is lower [than among the peasants who work with their own animals] by virtue of the law of mechanics which says that three horses harnessed together do not pull three times as much as one horse. Those who arrange to yoke may live at different ends of the village (they are usually relatives); furthermore, the number of plots belonging to the two householders (sometimes three householders yoke) is twice that of one. All this increases the time spent on travelling from one section to another.” [A footnote says: “When the land is divided, each household receives for its members an unbroken patch in a particular field; hence small families receive smaller patches. The conditions of yoking in Taurida Gubernia vary considerably. If one of the yokers has a drill plough, he gets an extra dessiatine ploughed—e.g., one gets 10 dessiatines, the other 11—or the one who has no drill plough of his own has to bear all the expenses of repairing it while in use. Similarly, when the number of yoked animals is unequal, one gets an extra day’s ploughing done, etc. In the village of Kamenka, the owner of a drill plough receives from three to six rubles in cash for the spring. Quarrels among the yokers are generally very frequent.”] “Some time is also spent in coming to terms, and it may happen that the yokers fall out before the work is finished. The yokers sometimes do not have enough horses for harrowing, in which case the drill plough horses are unharnessed: some go off for water, while the others harrow. In the village of Yuzkui, I was told that yokers often plough no more than one dessiatine a day, which is half the normal rate” (p. 233). There is a shortage of implements in addition to the shortage of animals. From the table given above, showing the number of implements per household in the various groups, we see that in the middle group, in all the uyezds, there is not less than one ploughing implement per household. Actually, however, the distribution of implements even within the group is by no means uniform. Unfortunately, Post-

58

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nikov does not give any data on this subject, and we have to turn to the Zemstvo statistical abstracts. In Dnieper Uyezd, 1,808 households out of 8,227 have no ploughing implements at all; in Melitopol Uyezd 2,954 out of 13,789; in the former uyezd the ill-provided households constitute 21.9% of the total; in the latter 21.4%. There can be no doubt that the householders who have no ploughing implements approximate the bottom group in economic status, while those who have more than one such implement per household approximate the top group. The number of householders who have no ploughs is even higher: 32.5% in Dnieper Uyezd and 65.5% in Melitopol. Lastly, the peasants of this group own an insignificant number of reaping machines (they are of very great importance in South-Russian peasant farming because of the shortage of workers for hand reaping and the long-tract system, 13 which drags out grain removal for months): in Dnieper Uyezd the whole group owns 20 mowing and reaping machines (one per 400 households); in Melitopol Uyezd, 178 @ (one per 700 households). The general system of peasant farming in this group is described by Postnikov as follows: “Householders having less than four draught animals invariably yoke together for the cultivation of their fields and for sowing. The householders of this category have either two working members or only one. The lower relative working capacity of such farmers is due to the smaller size of the farms, the yoking system, and the shortage of implements. The yokers mostly plough with small, three-share drill ploughs, which work more slowly. If such peasants harvest their grain with machines hired from neighbours, they get them only after the latter have cut their own crops. Harvesting by hand takes longer, in some cases necessitates the hiring of day labourers, and is more expensive. For singlehanded peasants any urgent household matter, or the performance of public duties, interrupts the work. If the singlehanded peasant goes to work in a distant field, where the peasants usually spend the whole week until the ploughing and sowing are completed, he has to return to the village more often to see how the family at home is faring” (p. 278). Such single-handed peasants (one working member in the

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family) constitute the majority in the group under examination, as will be seen from the following table given by Postnikov and showing the number of working members in the families in the different crop-sowing groups in all the three uyezds of Taurida Gubernia (p. 143): Per 100 households With no male workers

Cultivating no land up to 5 dess. ” 5 to 10 ” ” 10 to 25 ” ” 25 to 50 ” ” over 50 ” ” Average

With 1 worker

With 2 workers

With 3 or more Workers

19 9 4.2 1.7 1.2 0.9

67 77.6 74.8 59 40 25

11 11.7 17.7 29 35.7 34.3

3 1.7 3.3 10.3 23.1 39.8

4.3

60.6

24.6

10.5

It will be seen from this table that three-fifths of the families in the middle group have one working member each or none at all.* To illustrate the relation of the middle to the top group, and the stability of its farms in general, let us quote data from Statistical Returns for Dnieper Uyezd showing how all the land at the peasants’ disposal, and the cultivated area ** in particular, is distributed among the groups We get the following table: ***

* In support of his point about the considerable advantages in farming enjoyed by the large-family householders (i.e. those with many working members) over the single-handed householders, Postnikov cites Trirogov’s well-known book The Village Community and the Peasant Tax. ** The data relate to the entire Dnieper Uyezd, including villages not counted in the volosts. The figures in the “Total land in use” column I have calculated myself, by adding together the amounts of allotment, rented and purchased land and subtracting the amount leased. Dnieper Uyezd has been chosen because it is inhabited almost exclusively by Russians. *** See table on p. 60.—Ed.

100

%

28

46.5

221,082.9 100

18.4 221,082.9

Prosperous

Total

41.7 221,082.9

Dessiatines

33,910

26,530.75

5,376

56,444.95 25.5 2,003.35

Middle

Percentage of toal households

39.9

Dessiatines

Poor

Peasant Groups %

35

8,311

6 21,551.25

Leased Land

148,256.45

44,735.7

Sown area

38,439.25

46

43

11

%

326,397.45 100

46.4 150,614.45

41.2 137,343.75

12.4

359,973.85 100

81,645.95 59 3,039.25 166,981.7

48,397.75

7,838.75

Dessiatines

100 137,882.45 100 32,901.5

78

16

6

%

Total land in use by group Dessiatines

Rented land

%

Purchased Land Dessiatines

Allotment Land

60 V. I. L E N I N

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61

This table shows that the middle group held more allotment arable than the others: 46.5% of the total. The peasants were forced by the inadequacy of their allotments to resort to renting, as a result of which the area cultivated by them increased all in all by more than 50%. The amount of land in the hands of the middle group also increased absolutely, but decreased relatively—to 41.2% of the total area and 43% of the cultivated area; first place was occupied by the top group. Hence, not only the bottom group, but the middle one, too, feels the direct pressure of the top group, which deprives them of the land. All that has been said entitles us to describe the economic status of the middle group as follows. It comprises peasants who live exclusively on the returns from the land they cultivate themselves; the area of the latter is almost equal to the average area cultivated by the local peasantry (or somewhat less) and barely covers the family’s essential needs. But the insufficiency of animals and implements, and their uneven distribution, render the farming of this group of peasants unstable, precarious, especially in view of the menacing tendency of the top group to squeeze out the bottom and middle groups. Let us now turn to this top group, which comprises the affluent peasantry. In the Taurida uyezds it embraces one-fifth of the population, with a cultivated area of over 25 dessiatines per household. Sufficient facts have already been cited to show the extent to which this group is really richer than the others in draught animals, implements, and allotment and other land. To show how much better off the peasants of this group are than the middle peasants, we shall cite only the following data of crop areas: in Dnieper Uyezd, the well-to-do group have 41.3 dessiatines under crops per household, whereas the average for the uyezd is 17.8 dessiatines, or less than half as much. Generally speaking, this aspect of the matter—the greater prosperity of the big cultivators— has been sufficiently brought out by Postnikov, but he pays practically no attention to another and far more important question: what part is played by this group’s farming in the total agricultural production of the region, and what price is paid by the other groups for the thriving condition of the top group.

62

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The fact of the matter is that this group is numerically very small—in the most prosperous region of the South, Taurida Gubernia, it constitutes only 20% of the population. It might therefore be thought that its relative importance to the locality’s general economy is not great. * Actually, however, we find the contrary to be true: this well-to-do minority plays a predominant part in the total output of agricultural produce. In the three Taurida uyezds, out of a total of 1,439,267 dessiatines under crops 724,678 dessiatines, or more than half, are in the hands of the wellto-do peasants. These figures, of course, are a far from accurate expression of the predominance of the top group, inasmuch as the well-to-do peasants’ harvests are much larger than those of the poor and the middle peasants, who, as shown in Postnikov’s description quoted above, do not run their farms on proper lines. Thus, the principal grain producers are the top group of peasants, and hence (a fact of the utmost importance, and one particularly often ignored) all the various descriptions of agriculture and talk about agricultural improvements and so on, relate primarily and mostly (sometimes even exclusively) to the prosperous minority Let us take, for example, the data relating to the distribution of improved implements. Postnikov speaks of the Taurida peasant’s implements as follows: “With few exceptions, the implements of the peasant are the same as those of the German colonist, but less varied, sometimes of poorer quality, and therefore cheaper. An exception is the south-western, less densely populated part of Dnieper Uyezd, where the primitive Little-Russian implements, the heavy wooden plough and wooden irontipped drill plough, are still in vogue. In the rest of the Taurida uyezds, the ploughs used by the peasants are everywhere of an improved type, made of iron. Side by side with the iron plough the drill plough is everywhere of primary importance in the cultivation of the soil and in many cases

* This mistake, for example, is made by Mr. Slonimsky, who in an article on Postnikov’s book says: “The well-to-do group of peasants is lost in the mass of the poor, and in some areas would seem to be altogether non-existent.” (Vestnik Yevropy, 14 1893, No. 3, p. 307.)

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is the only ploughing implement used by the peasants. But most frequently the drill plough is used side by side with the iron plough.... The harrows everywhere are of wood, with iron teeth, and are of two types: two-horse harrows, with a 10-foot stretch, and one-horse harrows, with a stretch of about 7 feet.... The drill plough is an implement with 3, 4 or 5 shares.... Very often a small seed-drill is attached to the front of the drill plough and is operated by its wheel. It plants the seed while the drill plough fills in the drills. Of the other implements used by the peasants in cultivating the soil we meet, although not often, with the wooden roller, used to roll the soil after sowing. Reaping-machines have spread among the peasants particularly in the last 10 years. In the more prosperous villages, the peasants relate, almost half the households possess them.... Mowing-machines are far more rarely met with among the peasants than reapers.... Horse rakes and threshers are equally rare. The use of winnowing-machines is universal.... For carting purposes, the German farm waggon and mazhara * are used exclusively; they are now built in many of the Russian villages. Stone toothed rollers of various sizes are universally used for threshing” (pp. 213-15). To learn how these implements are distributed, we have to turn to the Zemstvo statistical abstracts, although their data are not complete either: the Taurida statisticians registered only ploughs and drill ploughs, reapers and mowers, and vehicles (waggons and mazharas). If we combine the data for Melitopol and Dnieper uyezds we shall find that of the total number (46,522) of ploughs and cultivators the top group owns 19,987, or 42.9%; waggons, 23,747 out of 59,478, or 39.9%; and, finally, reapers and mowers, 2,841 out of 3,061, or 92.8%. Data have already been cited to show that labour productivity in the top groups of the peasantry is considerably higher than in the bottom and middle groups. Let us now see what peculiarities of technique determine this specific feature of the economy of the big cultivators. “The amount of land held and used by the peasants,” says Postnikov, “largely determines the system and character of farming. Unfortunately, the dependence of one on the

* Mazhara—a long heavy farm of poles for its sides.—Ed. Eng. ed.

cart

with

a

light

framework

64

V. I. L E N I N

other has so far been little studied by our investigators of peasant farming, who not infrequently conceive it to be of the same type among all sections of the rural population. Leaving aside the system of farming, I shall endeavour briefly to summarise the peculiarities in the farming technique of different peasant groups insofar as I have been able to ascertain them during my visits to the Taurida uyezds. “Householders who work with their own animals and do not resort to yoking, own four, five, six or more draught animals.* Their economic status, however, varies considerably. A fourshare drill plough requires a team of four animals, a fiveshare implement a team of five animals. Ploughing is followed by harrowing, and if the farmer has no extra horse, he cannot harrow immediately behind the plough, but only when the ploughing is finished, that is, the seed is covered when the soil is already slightly dry, a circumstance that does not favour germination. If the ploughing is done at a distance from the village, necessitating the carting of water and fodder, the absence of an extra horse also interrupts the work. In all such cases, the lack of a full complement of working animals leads to loss of time and delays the sowing. Given a larger number of draught animals and a multi-share drill plough, the peasants are able to plant their fields more quickly, to make the most of favourable weather, and to cover the seed with moister soil. Thus it is the “full” farmer, the one with six, or, better still, seven draught animals, that has the advantage in the technique of spring sowing. With seven horses, a five-share drill plough and two harrows can function simultaneously. Such a farmer, the peasants say, ‘carries on without a stop.’ “Even more important is the difference in the status of the farmers in the period immediately following the reaping, when in a good harvest year the utmost exertion of labourpower is demanded on the farm. A farmer with six draught animals can thresh the grain as it is carted and does not need to stack it, thus, of course, saving time and manpower” (p. 277). To complete the description of the big cultivator’s economy, it should be mentioned that farming in the case of this group of cultivators is a “commercial” enterprise, as

* The peasants of the prosperous group own 6 to 10 draught animals per household (see sbove).

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Postnikov puts it. The data given above showing the size of the commercial area fully bear out the author’s description, inasmuch as the greater part of the cultivated area yields produce for the market—52% of the total area on farms with from 25 to 50 dessiatincs under crops, and 61% on farms with over 50 dessiatines under crops. Further evidence of this is the amount of the cash income: even the minimum in the case of the well-to-do group—574 rubles per household— is more than double the essential cash expenditure (200 to 250 rubles), thus forming a surplus which is accumulated and serves for the farm’s expansion and improvement. “In the case of the more affluent peasants, those with over 50 dessiatines under crops per household,” even “one branch of animal husbandry—the breeding of coarse-fleece sheep—assumes a market character,” as Postnikov informs us (p. 188). Let us now pass to another question, one that is also inadequately treated (in fact, left practically untouched) by Postnikov: how does the economic success of the minority of the peasants affect the majority? Undoubtedly, the effect is completely negative: the data cited above (especially those relating to the renting of land) are sufficient proof of this, so that we may here confine ourselves merely to summing up. In all three uyezds of Taurida Gubernia, the peasants rent a total of 476,334 dessiatines of land (non-allotment and allotment), of which 298,727 dessiatines, or more than three-fifths (63%), are taken by the prosperous group. Only 6% falls to the share of the poor group, and 31% to that of the middle group. If we bear in mind that it is the two bottom groups that are most—if not exclusively—in need of rented land (the data given above regarding the distribution of land among the peasant groups in Dnieper Uyezd show that in the case of the top group the allotment arable alone is almost sufficient for a sown area of “normal” size), it will be obvious how severely they must suffer from lack of land due to the commercial expansion of the tillage of prosperous peasants. *

* “The German colonist presses hard upon the local peasant ... in depriving him of adjacent land, which he could otherwise rent or purchase,” says Postnikov (p. 292). Obviously, in this respect the Russian well-to-do peasant stands closer to the German colonist than to his poor compatriot.

66

V. I. L E N I N

The distribution of the renting of allotment land, data for which have been given above, leads to exactly the same conclusions. To show the importance of the renting of allotment land to the different groups of peasants, let us quote the description of this type of renting given in Chapter IV of Postnikov’s work. “Allotment land,” he says, “is now an object of extensive speculation among the South-Russian peasants. Land is used as security for loans on promissory notes, these latter circulating very widely here among the Taurida peasants, the proceeds from the land going to the money-lender until the debt is cleared. The land is leased or ‘sold’ for one or two years, and longer periods—8, 9 or 11 years. Such allotment leases are officially registered in the volost or village administration offices. On Sundays and holidays, I have seen large animated crowds in big villages standing in front of the village administration offices. In answer to my inquiry as to why the people were assembled, I was told that refreshments were being consumed and allotments ‘sold,’ the ‘sales’ being registered in the books of the village authorities.... The ‘sale’ of allotments is practised both in villages where the land is divided according to the number of registered persons in each family and no fundamental redistribution of the land takes place, and in villages where the land is divided according to the number of actual members in each family and is subject to periodical redistribution; only, in the latter case, the transactions are usually for shorter periods, until the next redistribution date, which in these parts has recently in most cases been determined in advance by the community’s decision on land redistribution. Nowadays, these allotment-land transactions in the South-Russian villages are bound up with the most vital interests of the local prosperous peasants, who are so numerous here, especially in the Taurida uyezds. They are, incidentally, one of the principal conditions for the extensive cultivation of land practised by prosperous Taurida peasants, and of considerable economic advantage to them. That is why the prosperous peasants are so sensitive nowadays to every change in their manner of life which might deprive them of this renting of land that is mostly cheap and is, moreover, situated near by” (p. 140). He

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then goes on to tell of how the Melitopol Uyezd Board of Peasants’ Aflairs 15 demanded that each separate case of allotment leasing should be sanctioned by the village assembly, how the peasants were inconvenienced by this order and how “its only effect so far has been the disappearance of the land transaction records from the village courts, although they are probably still being kept unofficially” (p. 140). Despite the large amount of land they rent, the prosperous peasants are also practically the only purchasers of land: in Dnieper Uyezd they own 78% of all the purchased land, and in Melitopol Uyezd 42,737 dessiatines out of a total of 48,099 dessiatines, or 88%. Lastly, it is exclusively this category of peasants to whom credits are available. To supplement the author’s remarks already cited on the village loan-and-savings societies in the South, we shall quote the following description of them. “The village loan-and-savings .societies now to be found here and there in our country—they are very numerous in the Taurida villages, for example—chiefly assist prosperous peasants, and, it is to be presumed, quite substantially. I have on several occasions heard peasants in the Taurida villages where these societies function saying: ‘Thank God, we’ve got rid of the Jews!’ But it is the prosperous peasants who say this. The economically weak peasants cannot find guarantors and do not get loans” (p. 368). There is nothing surprising in this monopoly of credit: the credit transaction is nothing more than deferred-payment purchase. Quite naturally, payment can only be made by those who have the means, and among the South-Russian peasants it is only the well-to-do minority that have them. To complete the description of the economy of this group, which surpasses all the other groups taken together in the fruits of its productive activity, we have only to recall that it resorts “to a considerable extent” to hired labour, of which members of the lower group are perforce the suppliers. It should be remarked in this regard that it is a matter of immense difficulty to calculate exactly the hired labour employed in agriculture, a difficulty which, it seems, has not yet been overcome by our Zemstvo statistics. As agriculture does not require a constant and

68

V. I. L E N I N

steady supply of labour all year round, but only an extra supply for a definite season, the registration of regular hired labourers alone will by no means indicate the degree of exploitation of hired labour, while the calculation of the number of seasonal (often casual) labourers is extremely difficult. In making a rough estimate of the number of hired labourers in each group, Postnikov sets the labour norm in the prosperous group at 15 dessiatines under crops per working member. * From Chapter VII of his book, where the author examines in detail the actual size of the area cultivated, we learn that this norm is achieved only when the crop is machine harvested. Yet the number of harvesting-machines is not very large even in the prosperous group—in Dnieper Uyezd, for example, it is about one per 10 households—so that even if we bear in mind.the author’s statement that when they have completed their own harvesting, the owners of the machines hire them out, we shall nevertheless find that the majority of the peasants have to go without machines, and, consequently, have to ,hire day labourers. The employment of hired labour in the top group must therefore be on a larger scale than the author estimates, so that the big money income obtained by the peasants of this group largely (if not entirely) represents income from capital, in the specific meaning of that term given to it by scientific political economy. Summing up what has been said about the third group, we arrive at the following description of it: the prosperous peasants, who possess considerably more than the average quantity of means of production, and whose labour, as a consequence, is more productive, are the principal growers of agricultural produce in the district, and predominate over the remaining groups; this group’s farming is commercial in character, and is very largely based on the exploitation of hired labour. The brief survey we have made of the political-economic differences in the economy of the three groups of the population of this area has been based on a systematisation of

* For 1.8 to 2.3 working members it is 27 to 34.5 dessiatines; but, as we know,the peasants of the prosperous group sow 34.5 to 75 dessiatines. Hecnce, the general characteristic of this group is that the size of the farm far exceeds the family labour norm.

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the material contained in Postnikov’s book on South-Russian peasant farming. This survey, it seems to me, proves that a study of peasant farming (from the political-economic standpoint) is quite impossible unless the peasants are divided into groups. Postnikov, as has already been indicated, recognises this, and even flings the reproach at the Zemstvo statisticians that they do not do this, that the summaries they make, despite the abundance of figures given, are “unclear,” and that “they do not see the wood for the trees” (p. XII). Postnikov is hardly entitled to cast this reproach at the Zemstvo statisticians, for he himself has not made a systematic division of the peasants into “clear” groups, but the correctness of his demand is beyond question. Once it is admitted that there are not only quantitative, but also qualitative * differences between the various farms, it becomes absolutely essential to divide the peasants into groups differing, not in “affluence,” but in the social and economic character of their farming. One is justified in hoping that it will not be long before this is done by the Zemstvo statisticians. V Not confining himself to recording the economic strife among the peasantry, Postnikov points to the intensifica-

tion of this process: “Diversity in the prosperity of the peasant groups is to be found everywhere in this country,” he says, “and has existed from time immemorial. But in the last few decades this differentiation among the peasant population is becoming very marked, and is apparently steadily progressing” (p. 130). The difficult economic conditions of the year 1891 16 should, in the opinion of the author, give new impetus to this process.

* Character of farming: self-consumer or commercial, character of exploitation of labour: sale of labour-power as the chief source of livelihood, or purchase of labour-power as the necessary consequence of the expansion of the cultivated area beyond the family’s working capacity.

70

V. I. L E N I N

The question arises: what are the causes of this phenomenon which is exerting such an immense influence on the entire peasant population? “Taurida Gubernia,” says Postnikov, “is one of the most land-abundant in European Russia, and the one where the peasants’ allotments are largest; communal landownership is universal there, and the land is distributed more or less evenly per head; agriculture is practically the sole pursuit of the rural population, yet the house-to-house census shows that 15% of the population have no draught animals at all, and that about one-third of the population have not enough implemeuts to cultivate their allotments” (p. 106). “On what,” asks the author, “does this wide diversity of the groups depend, and, in particular, what, in a purely agricultural economy, determines the high proportion of householders with no tillage or draught animals that we now find in the region described?” (P. 130.) Setting out in search of the causes of this phenomenon, Postnikov goes completely astray (fortunately, not for long) and starts to talk about “indolence,””drunkenness,” and even about fires and horse-stealing. Nevertheless, he arrives at the conclusion that it is not in these causes that “the most essential aspect of the matter is to be found.” Nor is anything explained by talking about bereavement in families, i.e., absence of adult working members: in the Taurida uyezds, of the total number of non-farming households, i.e., that have no land under crops, bereaved families constitute only 18%. “The chief reasons why households are non-farming,” the author concludes, “must be sought in other factors of the peasants’ economic life” (p. 134). Specifically, Postnikov is of the opinion that “of the enumerated causes contributing to the decline of farming among certain peasants, the one which may be considered the most fundamental, and which, unfortunately, our Zemstvo statisticians have done little to elucidate as yet, is the fragmentation of the allotments and the restricted amount of land in use by the peasant, the diminution in the average size of the peasant farm” (p. 141). “The root cause of Russia’s economic poverty,” the author says, “is the small size of the peasant’s

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land and of his farm, which prevents him from making full use of the labour-power of his family” (p. 341). To explain this proposition, which Postnikov expresses very inaccurately, for he himself has established that the average size of peasant farm (17 to 18 dessiatines under crops) is sufficient to maintain a family in comfort, and that a general, wholesale description of the entire peasantry in terms of the size of the farm is impossible—it should be recalled that he has already established the general law that the productivity of peasant labour grows with the increase in the size of the farm. Full utilisation of the family’s labourpower (and draught animals) is achieved, according to his estimates, only in the top groups—in the Taurida uyezds, for example, only among the prosperous peasants; the vast majority of the population “pick at the land unproductively” (p. 340), uselessly wasting a vast amount of effort. Despite the fact that the author has fully demonstrated the dependence of labour productivity on the size of the farm and the extremely low productivity in the bottom peasant groups, this law (Postnikov calls it agricultural over-population in Russia, agricultural over-saturation with labour) should not be regarded as the cause of the break-up of the peasantry—the question, after all, is why the peasantry have broken up into such different groups, whereas agricultural over-population already presupposes the existence of such a break-up; the author arrived at the very concept of over-population by comparing small and large farms and their profitability. Hence, the question—“on what does the wide diversity of the groups depend?”—cannot be answered by talking about agricultural over-population. This, apparently, Postnikov himself realised, but he did not set himself the definite aim of investigating the causes of the phenomenon, so that his observations suffer from a certain scrappiness: side by side with incomplete and inaccurate points, we find true ideas. For example, he says: “It cannot be expected that the fierce struggle now going on in rural life over landownership will help in the future to further the principles of communality and harmony among the population. And this struggle is not a transitory one, the result of chance causes.... In our view it is not a

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struggle between communal traditions and the individualism that is developing in rural life, but a pure struggle of economic interests, which is bound to end fatally for one section of the population in view of the existing land poverty” (p. XXXII). “It is quite an obvious truth,” says Postnikov elsewhere, “that with this land poverty and the small size of the farms, and the absence of sufficient industries, there can be no prosperity among the peasantry, and all that is economically weak is bound, one way or another, sooner or later, to be ousted from peasant farming” (p. 368). These remarks contain a much truer answer to the question, and one, moreover, that fully conforms to the aboveestablished differentiation of the population. The answer is that the appearance of a mass of non-farming households and the increase in their numbers, are determined by the struggle of economic interests among the peasantry. On what basis is this struggle being waged, and by what means? As to the means, they are not only, and not even so much, the grabbing of land (as might be concluded from Postnikov’s remarks just quoted), as the lower production costs following on the increase in the size of the farms—of which enough has already been said. As for the basis on which this struggle arises, Postnikov points to it quite clearly in the following remark: “There is a definite minimum of farm-service area below which a peasant farm must not drop, because it would then become unprofitable, or even impossible to run. A definite food area is required for the maintenance of family and livestock (?); a farm which has no outside earnings, or where they are small, must possess a certain market area, the produce of which may be sold to provide the peasant family with money for the payment of taxes, for the acquisition of clothing and footwear, for necessary expenditure on farm implements, buildings, etc. If the size of a peasant farm falls below this minimum, farming becomes impossible. In such cases, the peasant will find it more profitable to give up farming and become a labourer, whose expenditure is more limited and whose needs can be more fully satisfied even with a smaller gross income” (p. 141). If, on the one hand, a peasant finds it profitable to ex-

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pand his sown area far beyond his own grain requirements, it is because he can sell his produce. If, on the other hand, a peasant finds it profitable to give up farming and become a labourer, it is because the satisfaction of the greater part of his needs entails cash expenditure, that is, sale; * and as, in selling his farm produce, he encounters a rival on the market with whom he cannot compete, the only thing left for him is to sell his labour-power. In a word, the soil in which the above-described phenomena grow is production for sale. The fundamental cause of the struggle of economic interests arising among the peasantry is the existence of a system under which the market is the regulator of social production. Having concluded his description of the “new economic developments in peasant life” and his attempt to explain them, Postnikov goes on to outline practical measures to solve the “agrarian problem.” We shall not follow the author into this field, firstly, because it does not enter the plan of the present article, and, secondly, because this part of Postnikov’s work is the weakest of all. This will be quite obvious if we recall that most of the contradictions and incomplete statements in the work were to be met with precisely when the author tried to explain economic processes; and unless these are fully and accurately explained, there can be no question of indicating any practical measures.

* Cf. the data given above regarding the food and the commercial areas under crops (the income from only these areas goes to cover the needs of the farmer, and not of the farm, that is, represents income in the real sense, and not production costs), and also the data regarding the average cash expenditure of the Taurida peasant in connection with the quantity of grain used for food (two chetverts per person of either sex).

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION 17

Written in the autumn of 1 8 9 3 First published in 1 9 3 7 in No. 2 1 of the journal Bolshevik

Published according to the manuscript

First manuscript paage of Lenin’s On the So-Called Market Question, 1893 (Reduced)

dellaC-oS eht nO s’nineL fo egaap tpircsunam tsriF ) d e c u d e R ( 3 9 8 1 ,n o i t s e u Q t e k r a M

79

I Can capitalism develop in Russia and reach full development when the masses of the people are poor and are becoming still poorer? The development of capitalism certainly needs an extensive home market; but the ruin of the peasantry undermines this market, threatens to close it altogether and make the organisation of the capitalist order impossible. True, it is said that, by transforming the natural economy of our direct producers into a commodity economy, capitalism is creating a market for itself; but is it conceivable that the miserable remnants of the natural economy of indigent peasants can form the basis for the development in our country of the mighty capitalist production that we see in the West? Is it not evident that the one fact of the masses being impoverished already makes our capitalism something impotent and without foundation, incapable of embracing the entire production of the country and of becoming the basis of our social economy? Such are the questions that are constantly being advanced in our literature in opposition to the Russian Marxists; the absence of a market is one of the principal arguments invoked against the possibility of applying the theory of Marx to Russia. To refute this argument is the aim, incidentally, of the paper The Market Question, which we are about to discuss. II The main premise of the author of the paper is the assumption of the “general and exclusive domination of capitalist production.” Proceeding from that premise he expounds

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the contents of Chapter XXI of Volume II of Capital (Part III—“The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital”). Here Marx sets out to investigate how social production replaces the part of the product which serves to satisfy the personal needs of the workers and the capitalists, and that which goes to form the elements of productive capital. Hence, in Volume I, the investigation of the production and reproduction of an individual capital could be limited to an analysis of the component parts of capital and the product according to their value—[as is shown in Volume I of Capital the value of the product consists of c (constant capital) # v (variable capital) # s (surplus-value)]— but here the product must be divided into its material components, because that part of the product which consists of the elements of capital cannot be used for personal consumption, and vice versa. In view of that, Marx divides aggregate social production—and consequently, the aggregate social product—into two departments: I) the production of means of production, i.e., the elements of productive capital—commodities which can serve only for productive consumption, and II) the production of means of consumption, i.e., commodities that serve for the personal consumption of the working class and the capitalist class. The investigation is based on the following scheme [Arabic numerals indicate units of value—millions of rubles, for example; Roman numerals indicate the above-mentioned departments of social production. The rate of surplus-value is taken at 100 per cent]: I 4,000 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s = 6,000 II 2,000 c # 500 v # 500 s = 3,000

= 7,500 { Capital Product = 9,000 {

Let us begin by supposing that we are dealing with simple reproduction, i.e., let us assume that production does not expand, but remains permanently on its former scale; this means that the capitalists consume the whole surplus-value unproductively, that they expend it for their personal needs and not for accumulation. Under those circumstances it is obvious, firstly, that II 500 v and II 500 s must be consumed by the capitalists and the workers in

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the same department II, since that product exists in the form of means of consumption intended for the satisfaction of personal needs. Further, I 4,000 c in its natural form must be consumed by the capitalists in the same department I, because the condition that the scale of production remains unchanged demands the retention of the same capital for the next year’s production of means of production; consequently, the replacement of this part of capital also presents no difficulty; the corresponding part of the product existing in the natural form of coal, iron, machines, etc., will be exchanged among the capitalists engaged in producing means of production and will serve them, as before, as constant capital. Thus, there remains I (v # s) and II c. I 1,000 v # I 1,000 s are products existing in the form of means of production, and II 2,000 c—in the form of means of consumption. The workers and capitalists in department I (under simple reproduction, i.e., consumption of the entire surplus-value) must consume means of consumption to the value of 2,000 [1,000 (v) # 1,000 (s)]. To be able to continue production on the previous scale, the capitalists in department II must acquire means of production to the extent of 2,000 in order to replace their constant capital (2,000 II c). It is evident from this that I v # I s must be exchanged for II c, because, if they are not, production on the previous scale will be impossible. The condition for simple reproduction is that the sum of the variable capital and surplusvalue in department I must be equal to the constant capital in department II: I (v # s) = II c. In other words, that law may be formulated as follows: the sum of all the new values produced in the course of a year (in both departments) must be equal to the gross value of the product existing in the form of means of consumption: I (v # s) # II (v # s) = II (c # v # s). Actually, of course, there can be no simple reproduction, both because the production of the whole of society cannot remain on the previous scale every year, and because accumulation is a law of the capitalist system. Let us, therefore, examine how social production on an expanding scale, or accumulation, takes place. Where there is accumulation, only part of the surplus-value is consumed by the capitalists for their personal needs, the other part being

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consumed productively, i.e., converted into the elements of productive capital for the expansion of production. Therefore, where there is accumulation, I (v # s) and II c cannot be equal: I (v # s) must be greater than II c in order that part of the surplus-value in department I (I s) may be used for the expansion of production, and not exchanged for means of consumption. Thus we get A. Scheme of Simple Reproduction: I 4,000 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s=6,000 II 2,000 c # 500 v # 500 s=3,000 I (v # s) = II c.

FROM MARX B. Initial Scheme of Accumulation: TO MAO I 4,000 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s=6,000




II 1,500 c # 750 v # 750 s=3,000 I (v # s) > II c.

Let us now see how social production must proceed if there is accumulation. First year. Capital = 7,250 I 4,000 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s = 6,000 Product = 9,000 II 1,500 c # 750 v # 750 s = 3,000 I (1,000 # 500 s) are exchanged for II 1,500 c (as in simple reproduction). I 500 s are accumulated, i.e., go to expand production, are converted into capital. If we take the previous division into constant and variable capital we get

NOT FOR{ COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION

{

I 500 s = 400 c # 100 v. The additional constant capital (400 c) is contained in the product I (its natural form is means of production); but the additional variable capital (100 v) must be obtained from the capitalists of department II, who, consequently, also have to accumulate: they exchange part of their surplus-value (II 100 s) for means of production (I 100 v) and convert these means of production into additional constant capital. Consequently, their constant capital grows from 1,500 c to 1,600 c; to process it additional labour-power

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ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

is needed—50 v, which is also taken out of the surplusvalue of the capitalists of department II. By adding the additional capital from department I and department II to the original capital we get the following distribution of the product: I 4,400 c # 1,100 v # (500 s)=6,000 II 1,600 c # 800 v # (600 s)=3,000 The surplus-value in parentheses represents the capitalists’ consumption fund, i.e., the part of surplus-value that does not go for accumulation, but for the personal needs of the capitalists. If production proceeds on the previous scale, at the end of the year we shall get:

{

{

Capital = 7,900 I 4,400 c # 1,100 v # 1,100 s = 6,600 Product = 9,800 II 1,600 c # 800 v # 800 s = 3,200 I (1,100 v # 550 s) are exchanged for II 1,650 c; the additional 50 c are taken from 800 II s [and the increase of c by 50 causes an increase of v by 25]. Further, 550 I s are accumulated as before: I s = 440 c #110 v AjjG 3 165 II s = 1 1 0 c # 55 v.

550

If to the original capital we now add the additional [to I 4,400 c—440 c; to I 1,100 v—110 v; to II 1,600 c — 50 c and 110 c; and to II 800v—25v—and 55v], we shall get; I 4,840 c # 1,210 v # (550 s) = 6,600 II 1,760 c # 880 v # (560 s) = 3,200 With the further progress of production we get I 4,840 c # 1,210 v # 1,210 s = 7,260 Capital = 8,690 Product = 10,780 II 1,760 c # 880 v # 880 s = 3,520 and so forth.

{

{

Such, in essence, are the results of Marx’s investigations in the reproduction of the aggregate social capital. These investigations (the reservation must be made) are given here in a most concise form; very much that Marx analyses in detail has been omitted—for

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example, circulation of money, replacement of fixed capital which is gradually worn out, and so forth—because all this has no direct bearing on the question under review. III What conclusions does the author of the paper draw from these investigations made by Marx? Unfortunately, he does not formulate his conclusions very precisely and definitely, so that we have to make our own judgement of them from certain remarks which do not fully harmonise with each other. Thus, for example, we read: “We have seen here,” says the author, “how accumulation takes place in department I, the production of means of production as means of production:... this accumulation takes place independently both of the progress of the production of articles of consumption and of the personal consumption itself, no matter whose it is” (page  ). Of course, it is wrong to speak of accumulation being “independent” of the production of articles of consumption, if only because the expansion of production calls for new variable capital and, consequently, articles of consumption; evidently, by using that term the author merely wanted to stress the specific feature of the scheme, namely, that the reproduction of I c—constant capital in department I— takes place without exchanges with department II, i.e., every year a certain quantity of, say, coal is produced in society for the purpose of producing coal. It goes without saying that this production (of coal for the purpose of producing coal) links up, by a series of subsequent exchanges, with the production of articles of consumption—otherwise, neither the coal-owners nor their workers could exist. Elsewhere, the author expresses himself much more feebly: “The principal movement of capitalist accumulation,” he says, “takes place, and has taken place (except in very early periods) independently of any direct producers, independently of the personal consumption of any stratum of the population” (p. 8). Here, reference is made only to the predominance of the production of means of production over the production of articles of consumption in

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the course of the historical development of capitalism. This reference is repeated in another passage: “On the one hand, the typical feature of capitalist society is accumulation for accumulation, productive but not personal consumption; on the other hand, typical of it is precisely the production of means of production as means of production” (p.  ). If by these references the author wanted to say that capitalist society is distinguished from the other economic organisations which preceded it precisely by the development of machines and the articles necessary for them (coal, iron, and so forth), then he is quite right. In technical level capitalist society is higher than all others, and technical progress is expressed precisely in the fact that the work of machines pushes human labour more and more into the background. Instead of engaging in criticism of the author’s insufficiently clear statements it will, therefore, be better to turn straight to Marx and see whether it is possible to draw from his theory the conclusion that department I “predominates” over department II, and in what sense this predominance is to be understood. From Marx’s scheme quoted above the conclusion cannot be drawn that department I predominates over department II: both develop on parallel lines. But that scheme does not take technical progress into consideration. As Marx proved in Volume I of Capital, technical progress is expressed by the gradual decrease of the ratio of variable capital to constant capital

o  o , whereas in the scheme it is taken

as unchanged. It goes without saying that if this change is made in the scheme there will be a relatively more rapid increase in means of production than in articles of consumption. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it will be worth while making that calculation, firstly, for the sake of clarity, and secondly, to avoid possible wrong conclusions from that premise. [In the following scheme the rate of accumulation is taken as constant: half of the surplus-value is accumulated and half is consumed personally.]

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[The reader may skip the following straight to the conclusions on the next stands for additional capital used for production, i.e., the accumulated part 1st year)

scheme and pass page. The letter a the expansion of of surplus-value.]

I 4,000 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s = 6,000. . . v : (c # v) = 20.0% II 1,500 c # 750 v # 750 s = 3,000. . . ” ” ” 33.3% I (1,000 v # 500 s) = II 1,500 c a. I 500 s = 450 c # 50 v. . .

”

”

” 

” I 4,450 c # 1,050 v # (500 s) = 6,000 II 1,550 c # 760 v # (690 s) = 3,000

”

”

AjG 3 a. II 60 s = 50 c # 10 v. . .

2nd year)

I 4,450 c # 1,050 v # 1,050 s = 6,550. . . II 1,550 c # 760 v # 760 s = 3,070. . . I (1,050 v # 525 s) = II 1,575 II (1,550



v : (c # v) = 19.2% ” ” ” 32.9%

c c # 25 s)

AjjjjjG 3 a. II

28 s = 25 c # 3 v. . .

”

”

a. I 525 s = 500 c # 25 v. . .

”

”

” ab.

” ab. 

” I 4,950 c # 1,070 v # (525 s) = 6,550 II 1,602 c # 766 v # (702 s) = 3,070

”

” ab.

AjG 3 a. II

3rd year)

28 s = 25 c # 3 v. . .

I 4,950 c # 1,075 v # 1,075 s = 7,100. . . II 1,602 c # 766 v # 766 s = 3,134. . .

v : (c # v) = 1 7 . 8 % ” ” ” 32.3% I (1,075 v # 537 @ s) = II 1,612 @ c II (1,602 c # 10 @ s)

AjjjjjG 3 a. II

”

a.

”

” ab. ” ab.

”

” ab. 

11 @ s = 10 @ c # 1 v . . . ” I 537 @ s = 517 @ c # 20 v. . . ”

AjjG 3 a. II

22 s = 20 c # 2 v

... ”

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ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

I 5,467 @ c # 1,095 v # (537 @ s) = 7,100 II 4th year)

1 ,634 @ c #

769 v # (730 @ s) = 3,134

I 5,467 @ c # 1,095 v # 1,095 s = 7,657 @ . . . II 1,634 @ c #

769 v #

769 s = 3,172 @ . . .

v : (c # v) = 16.7% ”

”

” 32.0%

and so forth.18

Let us now compare the conclusions drawn from this scheme concerning the growth of the various parts of the social product: 19 Means of production as means of

Means of production as means of

Production

Consumption

%

%

Means of consumption product

Aggregate social

%

%

1st year

4,000

100

2,000 100

3,000 100

9,000

100

2nd year

4,450

111.25 2,000 105

3,070 102

9,620

100

3rd year

4,950

123.75 2,000 107.5 3,134 104 10,234

100

4th year

5,467 @

136.7

2,000 109.5 3,172 106 10,828 @ 100

We thus see that growth in the production of means of production as means of production is the most rapid, then comes the production of means of production as means of consumption, and the slowest rata of growth is in the production of means of consumption. That conclusion could have been arrived at, without Marx’s investigation in Volume II of Capital, on the basis of the law that constant capital tends to grow faster than variable: the proposition that means of production grow faster is merely a paraphrase of this law as applied to social production as a whole. But perhaps we should take another step forward? Since we have accepted that the ratio v to c # v diminishes constantly, why not let v decrease to zero, the same number of workers being sufficient for a larger quantity of means of

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production? In that case, the accumulated part of surplusvalue will be added straight to constant capital in department I, and social production will grow exclusively on account of means of production as means of production, complete stagnation reigning in department * II. ** That would, of course, be a misuse of the schemes, for such a conclusion is based on improbable assumptions and is therefore wrong. Is it conceivable that technical progress, which reduces the proportion of v to c, will find expression only in department I and leave department II in a state of complete stagnation? Is it in conformity with the laws governing capitalist society, laws which demand of every capitalist that he enlarge his enterprise on pain of ruin, that no accumulation at all should take place in department II? Thus, the only correct conclusion that can be drawn from Marx’s investigation, outlined above, is that in capitalist society, the production of means of production increases faster than the production of means of consumption. As has been stated already, this conclusion follows directly from the generally known proposition that capitalist production attains an immeasurably higher technical level than production in previous times. *** On this point specifically Marx expresses himself quite definitely only in one

* I do not mean to say that such a thing is absolutely impossible as an individual case. Here, however, we are not discussing special cases, but the general law of development of capitalist society. ** I shall explain the point by the following scheme: I 4,000 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s = 6,000 II 1,500 c # 750 v # 750 s = 3,000 I (1,000 v # 500 s) = II 1,500 c I 500 s are accumulated, added to I 4,000 c: I 4,500 c # 1,000 v # (500 s) = 6,000 II 1,500 c # 750 v # 750 s = 3,000 I 4,500 c # 1,000 v # 1,000 s = 6,500 II 1,500 c # 750 v # 750 s = 3,000 I (1,000 v # 500 s) = II 1,500 c I 500 s are accumulated as before, and so forth. *** That is why the conclusion drawn can be formulated somewhat differently: in capitalist society, production (and, consequently, “the market”) can grow either on account of the growth of articles of consumption, or, and mainly, of technical progress, i.e., the ousting of hand by machine labour, for the change in the proportion of v to c expresses precisely the diminution of the role of hand labour.

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passage, and that passage fully confirms the correctness of the formula given: “What distinguishes capitalist society in this case from the savage is not, as Senior thinks, the privilege and peculiarity of the savage to expend his labour at times in a way that does not procure him any products resolvable (exchangeable) into revenue, i.e., into articles of consumption. No, the distinction consists in the following: “α) Capitalist society employs more [Nota bene] of its available annual labour in the production of means of production (ergo, of constant capital), which are not resolvable into revenue in the form of wages or surplus-value, but can function only as capital.” (Das Kapital, Bd. II, Seite 436.) 20 IV The question now is, what relation has the theory that has been expounded to “the notorious market question”? The theory is based on the assumption of the “general and exclusive domination of the capitalist mode of production,” whereas the “question” is one of whether the full development of capitalism is “possible” in Russia? True, the theory introduces a correction into the ordinary conception of the development of capitalism, but, evidently, the explanation of how capitalism develops in general does not in the least help to clear up the question of the “possibility” (and necessity) of the development of capitalism in Russia. The author of the paper, however, does not confine himself to expounding Marx’s theory of the process of aggregate social production organised on capitalist lines. He points to the necessity of distinguishing “two essentially different features in the accumulation of capital: 1) the development of capitalist production in breadth, when it takes hold of already existing fields of labour, ousting natural economy and expanding at the latter’s expense; and 2) the development of capitalist production in depth, if one may so express it, when it expands independently of natural economy, i.e., under the general and exclusive domination of the capitalist mode of production.” Without, for the time being, stopping to criticise this division, let us proceed directly to find out what the author means by the development

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of capitalism in breadth: the explanation of that process, which consists in the replacement of natural economy by capitalist economy, should show us how Russian capitalism will “take hold of the whole country.” The author illustrates the development of capitalism in breadth by the following diagram: *

A—capitalists; W—direct producers a, a 1 , a 11 ,—capitalist enterprises. The arrows show the movement of the commodities exchanged. c, v, m—component parts of the value of commodities. I, II—commodities in their natural form: I—means of production; II—means of consumption.

“The essential difference between the spheres A and W,” says the author, “is that in A the producers are capitalists who consume their surplus-value productively, whereas in W they are direct producers, who consume their surplus-value (here I mean the value of the product over and above the value of the means of production and necessary means of subsistence) unproductively. “If we follow the arrows in the diagram we shall easily see how capitalist production in A develops at the expense of consumption in W, gradually absorbing it.” The product of the capitalist enterprise a goes “to the direct producers” in

* m stands for “Mehrwert,” i.e., surplus-value (s); “u. m. ∂ .” means “and so on.”—Ed. Eng. ed.

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91

the form of articles of consumption; in exchange for it the “direct producers” return the constant capital (c) in the form of means of production and the variable capital (v) in the form of means of consumption, and the surplus-value (s) in the form of the elements of additional productive capital: c 1 # v 1. That capital serves as the basis of the new capitalist enterprise a 1 , which in exactly the same way sends its product in the form of articles of consumption to the “direct producers,” and so on. “From the above diagram of the development of capitalism in breadth it follows that the whole of production is most closely dependent upon consumption in ‘foreign’ markets, upon consumption by the masses (and from the general point of view it makes absolutely no difference where those masses are—alongside the capitalists, or somewhere across the ocean). Obviously, the expansion of production in A, i.e., the development of capitalism in this direction, will come to a stop as soon as all the direct producers in W turn into commodity producers, for, as we saw above, every new enterprise (or expansion of an old one) is calculated to supply a new circle of consumers in W.” In conclusion the author says: “The current conception of capitalist accumulation, i.e., of capitalist reproduction on an expanded scale, is limited solely to this view of things, and has no suspicion of the development of capitalist production in depth, independently of any countries with direct producers, i.e., independently of so-called foreign markets. ” The only thing we can agree with in this entire exposition is that this conception of the development of capitalism in breadth, and the diagram which illustrates it, is in complete accordance with the current, Narodnik views on the subject. It would, indeed, be difficult to depict the utter absurdity and vapidity of current views more saliently and strikingly than is done in the diagram given. “The current conception” always regarded capitalism in our country as something isolated from the “people’s system,” standing apart from it, exactly as it is depicted in the diagram from which it is quite impossible to see what connection there is between the two “spheres,” the capitalist sphere and the people’s sphere. Why do commodities sent from A find a market in W? What causes the transformation

92

V. I. L E N I N

of natural economy in W into commodity economy? The current view has never answered these questions because it regards exchange as something accidental and not as a certain system of economy. Further, the current view has never explained whence and how capitalism arose in our country any more than it is explained by the diagram: the matter is presented as though the capitalists have come from somewhere outside and not from among these very “direct producers.” Where the capitalists get the “free workers” who are needed for enterprises a, a1, etc., remains a mystery. Everybody knows that in reality those workers are obtained precisely from the “direct producers,” but the diagram does not show at all that when commodity production embraced “sphere” W, it created there a body of free workers. In short, the diagram—exactly like the current view— explains absolutely nothing about the phenomena of the capitalist system in our country and is therefore worthless. The object for which it was drawn—to explain how capitalism develops at the expense of natural economy, and embraces the whole country—is not achieved at all, because, as the author himself sees—”if we adhere consistently to the view under examination, then we must conclude that it is not possible for the development of the capitalist mode of production to become universal.” After this, one can only express surprise at the fact that the author himself adheres, if only in part, to that view when he says that “capitalism did indeed (?), in its infancy, develop in this very easy (sic!?) way (very easy because here existing branches of labour are involved) and is partly developing in the same direction even now (??), since there are still remnants of natural economy in the world, and since the population is growing.” Actually, this is not a “very easy” way of developing capitalism, but simply a “very easy” way of understanding the process; so “very easy” that it would be more correct to call it a total lack of understanding. The Russian Narodniks of all shades make shift to this very day with these “very easy” tricks: they never dream of explaining how capitalism arose in our country, and how it functions, but confine themselves to comparing the “sore spot” in our system, capi-

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

93

talism, with the “healthy spot,” the direct producers, the “people”; the former is put on the left, the latter on the right, and all this profound thinking is rounded off with sentimental phrases about what is “harmful” and what is “useful” for “human society.” V To correct the diagram given above we must begin by ascertaining the content of the concepts dealt with. By commodity production is meant an organisation of social economy in which goods are produced by separate, isolated producers, each specialising in the making of some one product, so that to satisfy the needs of society it is necessary to buy and sell products (which, therefore, become commodities) in the market. By capitalism is meant that stage of the development of commodity production at which not only the products of human labour, but human labour-power itself becomes a commodity. Thus, in the historical development of capitalism two features are important: 1) the transformation of the natural economy of the direct producers into commodity economy, and 2) the transformation of commodity economy into capitalist economy. The first transformation is due to the appearance of the social division of labour—the specialisation of isolated [N. B.: this is an essential condition of commodity economy], separate producers in only one branch of industry. The second transformation is due to the fact that separate producers, each producing commodities on his own for the market, enter into competition with one another: each strives to sell at the highest price and to buy at the lowest, a necessary result of which is that the strong become stronger and the weak go under, a minority are enriched and the masses are ruined. This leads to the conversion of independent producers into wage-workers and of numerous small enterprises into a few big ones. The diagram should, therefore, be drawn up to show both these features of the development of capitalism and the changes which this development brings about in the dimensions of the market, i.e., in the quantity of products that are turned into commodities.

94

V. I. L E N I N

The following table * has been drawn up on these lines; all extraneous circumstances have been abstracted, i.e., taken as constants (for example, size of population, productivity of labour, and much else) in order to analyse the influence on the market of only those features of the development of capitalism that are mentioned above. Let us now examine this table showing the consecutive changes in the system of economy of a community consisting of 6 producers. It shows 6 periods expressing stages in the transformation of natural into capitalist economy. 1st period. We have 6 producers, each of whom expends his labour in all 3 branches of industry (in a, in b and in c). The product obtained (9 from each producer: a # b # c = 9) is spent by each producer on himself in his own household. Hence, we have natural economy in its pure form; no products whatever appear in the market. 2nd period. Producer I changes the productivity of his labour: he leaves industry b and spends the time formerly spent in that industry in industry c. As a result of this specialisation by one producer, the others cut down production c, because producer I has produced more than he consumes himself, and increase production b in order to turn out a product for producer I. The division of labour which comes into being inevitably leads to commodity production: producer I sells 1 c and buys 1 b; the other producers sell 1 b (each of the 5 sells % b) and buy 1 c (each buying % c); a quantity of products appears in the market to the value of 6. The dimensions of the market correspond exactly to the degree of specialisation of social labour: specialisation has taken place in the production of one c (1 c= 3) and of one b (1 b= 3), i.e., a ninth part of total social production [18 c (= a= b)], and a ninth part of the total social product has appeared in the market. 3rd period. Division of labour proceeds further, embracing branches of industry b and c to the full: three producers engage exclusively in industry b and three exclusively in industry c. Each sells 1 c (or 1 b), i.e., 3 units of value, and also buys 3—1 b (or 1 c). This increased division of labour leads to an expansion of the market, in which 18 units of

* See

table on pp. 96-97.—Ed.

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

95

value now appear. Again, the dimensions of the market correspond exactly to the degree of specialisation (= division) of social labour: specialisation has taken place in the production of 3 b and 3 c, i.e., one-third of social production, and one-third of the social product appears in the market. The 4th period already represents capitalist production: the process of the transformation of commodity into capitalist production did not go into the table and, therefore, must be described separately. In the preceding period each producer was already a commodity producer (in the spheres of industry b and c, the only ones we are discussing): each producer separately, on his own, independently of the others, produced for the market, whose dimensions were, of course, not known to any one of them. This relation between isolated producers working for a common market is called competition. It goes without saying that an equilibrium between production and consumption (supply and demand) is, under these circumstances, achieved only by a series of fluctuations. The more skilful, enterprising and strong producer will become still stronger as a result of these fluctuations, and the weak and unskilful one will be crushed by them. The enrichment of a few individuals and the impoverishment of the masses—such are the inevitable consequences of the law of competition. The matter ends by the ruined producers losing economic independence and engaging themselves as wage-workers in the enlarged establishment of their fortunate rival. That is the situation depicted in the table. Branches of industry b and c, which were formerly divided among all 6 producers, are now concentrated in the hands of 2 producers (I and IV). The rest of the producers are their wage-workers, who no longer receive the whole product of their labour, but the product with the surplusvalue deducted, the latter being appropriated by the employer [let me remind you that, by assumption, surplusvalue equals one-third of the product, so that the producer of 2 b (= 6) will receive from the employer two-thirds— i.e., 4]. As a result, we get an increase in division of labour—and a growth of the market, where 22 units now appear, notwithstanding the fact that the “masses” are “impoverished”; the producers who have become (partly)

96

V. I. L E N I N

b

c

Natural consumption

5.

a

Total

I—II...—Vl are producers. a, b, c are branches of industry (for example, agriculture, manufacturing and extractive industries). a= b= c= 3. The magnitude of 1. value of the products a= b= c equals 3 (three units of value) of which 1 is surplus-value. * The “market” column shows the magnitude of value of the products sold (and bought); the figures in parentheses show the magnitude of value of the labour-power (=l. p.) sold (and bought). The arrows proceeding from one producer to another show that the first is a wage-worker for the second. Simple reproduction is assumed: 3. the capitalists consume the entire surplus-value unproductively.

Production

EXPLANATION OF THE TABLE

I

a

b

c

9

9

II

a

b

c

9

9

III

a

b

c

9

9

IV

a

b

c

9

9

V

a

b

c

9

9

VI

a

b

c

9

9

Total

6a

6b

6c

54

54

I

a

—

2b

9

6

II

a

2b

—

9

6

III

a

—

2b

9

6

IV

a

2b

—

9

6

V

a

—

2b

9

6

VI

a

2b

—

9

6

Total

6a

6b

6c

54

36

I

2a

6c

24

11

1@

1@

—

1@

1@

6b

—

24

11

—

—

1@

1@

ljj

—

1@

1@

6b

6c

54

28

Production Branch of industry

—

õ

él

II III IV V VI

* The

part or value which replaces constant capital is taken as unchanging and is thererore ignored.

Total

ljjjj

@a í —

—

ljjjjjj

@a í — 2a

õ

@a í

é l l

@a í — 6a

97

Production

a

Total

Natural consumption

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

—

—

I

a

—

2c

9

6

3

3

—

—

II

a

b

Tc

9

8E

R

R

—

—

III

a

b

Tc

9

8E

R

R

—

—

IV

a

b

Tc

9

8E

R

R

—

—

V

a

b

Tc

9

8E

R

R

—

—

VI

a

b

Tc

9

8E

R

R

—

—

Total

6a

6b

6c

54

48

6

6

3

3

I

6c

21

10

11

3 (+8 l.p.)

3

3

II

aú —

—

3

3

(4 l.p.)

4

3

3

III

aú —

jjjjjjj

—

3

3

(4 l.p.)

4

3

3

IV

—

21

10

11

3 (+8 l.p.)

3

3

V

a ü—

—

3

3

(4 l.p.)

4

jj

aú —

—

3

3

(4 l.p.)

4

6a

6b

6c

54

32

6a

—

—

18

6

12

6 (+6 l.p.)

Market

Buys

Branch of industry

b

c

a

õ

ê

Sells

Production

3

3

VI

18

18

Total

1

3 (+10 l.p.)

I

jjjjj

6b

õ

ë

a

Market

Sells

Buys

II

è

—

—

—

—

(6 l.p.)

6

(5 l.p.)

5

III

—

6b

—

18

6

12

6 (+6 l.p.)

13

3 (+10 l.p.)

IV

—

—

—

(6 l.p.)

6

(5 l.p.)

5

V

6c

18

6

12

6 (+6 l.p.)

(5 l.p.)

5

VI

—

—

—

(6 l.p.)

6

6c

54

18

26 26 Total (+20 l.p.) (+20 l.p.)

—

ê

5

ë

(5 l.p.)

—

jjjjjj

—ú — 6a

6b

4.

22 22 (+16 l.p.) (+16 l.p.)

é

—û—

2.

36 36 (+18 l.p.) (+18 l.p.)

6.

98

V. I. L E N I N

wage-workers no longer receive the whole product of 9, but only of 7—they receive 3 from their independent activity (agricultural—industry a) and 4 from wage-labour (from the production of 2 b or 2 c). These producers, now more wage-workers than independent masters, have lost the opportunity of bringing any product of their labour to the market because ruin has deprived them of the means of production necessary for the making of products. They have had to resort to “outside employments,” i.e., to take their labourpower to the market and with the money obtained from the sale of this new commodity to buy the product they need. The table shows that producers II and III, V and VI each sells labour-power to the extent of 4 units of value and buys articles of consumption to the same amount. As regards the capitalist producers, I and IV, each of them produces products to the extent of 21; of this, he himself consumes 10 [3 (=a) # 3 (=c or b) # 4 (surplus-value from 2 c or 2 b)] and sells 11; but he buys commodities to the extent of 3 (c or b) # 8 (labour-power). In this case, it must be observed, we do not get complete correspondence between the degree of specialisation of social labour (the production of 5 b and 5 c, i.e., to the sum of 30, was specialised) and the dimensions of the market (22), but this error in the table is due to our having taken simple reproduction, * i.e., with no accumulation; that is why the surplus-value taken from the workers (four units by each capitalist) is all consumed in kind. Since absence of accumulation is impossible in capitalist society, the appropriate correction will be made later. 5th period. The differentiation of the commodity producers has spread to the agricultural industry (a): the wageworkers could not continue their farming, for they worked mainly in the industrial establishments of others, and were ruined: they retained only miserable remnants of their farming, about a half (which, we assumed, was just enough to cover the needs of their families)—exactly as the present cultivated land of the vast mass of our peasant “agriculturists” are merely miserable bits of independent farming. The concentration of industry a in an insignificant

* This

also applies to the 5th and 6th periods.

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

99

number of big establishments has begun in an exactly similar way. Since the grain grown by the wage-workers is now not enough to cover their needs, wages, which were kept low by their independent farming, increase and provide the workers with the money to buy grain (although in a smaller quantity than they consumed when they were their own masters): now the worker produces 1 @ (= @ a) and buys 1, getting in all 2 @ instead of the former 3 (= a). The capitalist masters, having added expanded farming to their industrial establishments now each produce 2 a (=6), of which 2 goes to the workers in the form of wages and 1 ( # a)—surplus-value—to themselves. The development of capitalism depicted in this table is accompanied by the “impoverishment” of the “people” (the workers now consume only 6 @ each instead of 7, as in the 4th period), and by the growth of the market, in which 26 now appear. The “decline of farming,” in the case of the majority of the producers, did not cause a shrinkage, but an expansion of the market for farm produce. 6th period. The specialisation of occupations, i.e., the division of social labour, is completed. All branches of industry have separated, and have become the speciality of separate producers. The wage-workers have completely lost their independent farms and subsist entirely on wagelabour. We get the same result: the development of capitalism [independent farming on one’s own account has been fully eliminated], “impoverishment of the masses” [although the workers’ wages have risen, their consumption has diminished from 6 @ to 6: they each produce 9 (3a, 3b, 3c) and give their masters one-third as surplus-value], and a further growth of the market, in which there now appears two-thirds of the social product (36). VI Let us now draw the conclusions which follow from the above table. The first conclusion is that the concept “market” is quite inseparable from the concept of the social division

100

V. I. L E N I N

of labour—that “general basis of all commodity [and consequently, let us add, of capitalist] production” as Marx calls it. The “market” arises where, and to the extent that, social division of labour and commodity production appear. The dimensions of the market are inseparably connected with the degree of specialisation of social labour. “... It [a commodity] cannot acquire the properties of a socially recognised universal equivalent, except by being converted into money. That money, however, is in someone else’s pocket. In order to entice the money out of that pocket, our friend’s commodity must, above all things, be a use-value to the owner of the money. For this, it is necessary that the labour expended upon it be of a kind that is socially useful, of a kind that constitutes a branch of the social division of labour. But division of labour is a system of production which has grown up spontaneously and continues to grow behind the backs of the producers. The commodity to be exchanged may possibly be the product of some new kind of labour that pretends to satisfy newly arisen requirements, or even to give rise itself to new requirements. A particular operation, though yesterday, perhaps, forming one out of the many operations conducted by one producer in creating a given commodity, may today separate itself from this connection, may establish itself as an independent branch of labour and send its incomplete product to market as an independent commodity” (Das Kapital, Bd. 1, S. 85. 21 My italics). Thus, the limits of the development of the market, in capitalist society, are set by the limits of the specialisation of social labour. But this specialisation, by its very nature is as infinite as technical developments. To increase the productivity of human labour in, for instance, the making of some part of a whole product, the production of that part must be specialised, must become a special one concerned with mass production and, therefore, permitting (and engendering) the employment of machines, etc. That is on the one hand. On the other hand, technical progress in capitalist society consists in the socialisation of labour, and this socialisation necessarily calls for specialisation in the various functions of the production process, for their transformation from scattered, isolated functions repeated separately in

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

101

every establishment engaged in this production, into socialised functions concentrated in one, new establishment, and calculated to satisfy the requirements of the whole of society. I shall quote an example: “Recently, in the United States, the woodworking factories are becoming more and more specialised, ‘new factories are springing up exclusively for the making of, for instance, axe handles, broom handles, or extensible tables.... Machine building is making constant progress, new machines are being continuously invented to simplify and cheapen some side of production.... Every branch of furniture making, for instance, has become a trade requiring special machines and special workers.... In carriage building, wheel rims are made in special factories (Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee), wheel spokes are made in Indiana and Ohio, and hubs again are made in special factories in Kentucky and Illinois. All these separate parts are bought by factories which specialise in the making of whole wheels. Thus quite a dozen factories take part in the building of some cheap kind of vehicle’” (Mr. Tverskoi, “Ten Years in America,” Vestnik Yevropy, 1893, 1. I quote from Nik.—on, 22 p. 91, footnote 1). This shows how wrong is the assertion that the growth of the market in capitalist society caused by the specialisation of social labour must cease as soon as all natural producers become commodity producers. Russian carriage building has long become commodity production, but wheel rims, say, are still made in every carriage builder’s (or wheelwright’s) shop; the technical level is low, production is split up among a mass of producers. Technical progress must entail the specialisation of different parts of production, their socialisation, and, consequently, the expansion of the market. Here the following reservation must be made. All that has been said by no means implies the rejection of the proposition that a capitalist nation cannot exist without foreign markets. Under capitalist production, an equilibrium between production and consumption is achieved only by a series of fluctuations; the larger the scale of production, and the wider the circle of consumers it is calculated to serve, the more violent are the fluctuations. It can be under-

102

V. I. L E N I N

stood, therefore, that when bourgeois production has reached a high degree of development it can no longer keep within the limits of the national state: competition compels the capitalists to keep on expanding production and to seek foreign markets for the mass sale of their products. Obviously, the fact that a capitalist nation must have foreign markets just as little violates the law that the market is a simple expression of the social division of labour under commodity economy and, consequently, that it can grow as infinitely as the division of labour, as crises violate the law of value. Lamentations about markets appeared in Russian literature only when certain branches of our capitalist production (for example, the cotton industry) had reached full development, embraced nearly the entire home market and become concentrated in a few huge enterprises. The best proof that the material basis of the idle talk and “questions” of markets is precisely the interests of our large-scale capitalist industry, is the fact that nobody in our literature has yet prophesied the ruin of our handicraft industry because of the disappearance of “markets,” although the handicraft industry produces values totalling over a thousand million rubles and supplies the very same impoverished “people.” The wailing about the ruin of our industry due to the shortage of markets is nothing more than a thinly disguised manoeuvre of our capitalists, who in this way exert pressure on policy, identify (in humble avowal of their own “impotence”) the interests of their pockets with the interests of the “country” and are capable of making the government pursue a policy of colonial conquest, and even of involving it in war for the sake of protecting such “state” interests. The bottomless pit of Narodnik utopianism and Narodnik simplicity is needed for the acceptance of this wailing about markets—these crocodile tears of a quite firmly established and already conceited bourgeoisie— as proof of the “impotence” of Russian capitalism! The second conclusion is that “the impoverishment of the masses of the people” (that indispensable point in all the Narodnik arguments about the market) not only does not hinder the development of capitalism, but, on the contrary, is the expression of that development, is a condition of capitalism and strengthens it. Capitalism needs the

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

103

“free labourer,” and impoverishment consists in the petty producers being converted into wage-workers. The impoverishment of the masses is accompanied by the enrichment of a few exploiters, the ruin and decline of small establishments is accompanied by the strengthening and development of bigger ones; both processes facilitate the growth of the market: the “impoverished” peasant who formerly lived by his own farming now lives by “earnings,” i.e., by the sale of his labour-power; he now has to purchase essential articles of consumption (although in a smaller quantity and of inferior quality). On the other hand, the means of production from which this peasant is freed are concentrated in the hands of a minority, are converted into capital, and the product now appears on the market. This is the only explanation of the fact that the mass expropriation of our peasantry in the post-Reform epoch has been accompanied by an increase and not a decrease in the gross productivity of the country * and by the growth of the home market: it is a known fact that there has been an enormous increase in the output of the big factories and works and

* This may be a debatable point only in relation to the agricultural industry. “Grain production is in a state of absolute stagnation,” says Mr. N.—on, for example. He bases his conclusion on the data for only eight years (1871-1878). Let us examine the data for a longer period; an eight-year period is, of course, too short. Let us compare the statistics for the 1860’s [Military Statistical Abstract, 1871], the 1870’s [N.—on’s data] and the 1880’s [Returns for Russia, 1890]. The data cover 50 gubernias of European Russia and all crops, including potatoes. Annual average for

Sown

Harvested

Thousands of chetverts (minus seed)

Yield (times)

Population (thousands)

1864-1866 (3)

71,696

100

151,840

100

3.12

61,421 100 (1867)

1871-1878 (8)

71,378

99.5

195, 024

128.4

3.73

76,594 124.7 (1876)

1883-1887 (5)

80 293

111.9

254,914

167.8

4.71

85,395 139.0 (1886)

104

V. I. L E N I N

that there has been a considerable extension of the handicraft industries—both work mainly for the home market— and there has been a similar increase in the amount of grain circulating in the home markets (the development of the grain trade within the country). The third conclusion—about the significance of the production of means of production—calls for a correction to the table. As has already been stated, that table does not at all claim to depict the whole process of development of capitalism, but only to show how the replacement of natural by commodity economy and of the latter by capitalist economy affects the market. That is why accumulation was disregarded in the table. Actually, however, capitalist society cannot exist without accumulating, for competition compels every capitalist on pain of ruin to expand production. Such expansion of production is depicted in the table: producer 1, for example, in the interval between the 3rd and 4th periods, expanded his output of c threefold: from 2 c to 6 c; formerly he worked alone in his workshop—now he has two wage-workers. Obviously, that expansion of production could not have taken place without accumulation: he had to build a special workshop for several persons, to acquire implements of production on a larger scale, and to purchase larger quantities of raw materials and much else. The same applies to producer IV, who expanded the production of b. This expansion of individual establishments, the concentration of production, must of necessity have entailed (or increased, it makes no difference) the production of means of production for the capitalists: machines, iron, coal, etc. The concentration of production increased the productivity of labour, replaced hand by machine labour and discarded a certain number of workers. On the other hand, there was a development in the production of these machines and other means of production, converted by the capitalist into constant capital which now begins to grow more rapidly than variable capital. If, for example, we compare the 4th period with the 6th, we shall find that the production of means of production has increased 50 per cent (because in the former case there are two capitalist enterprises requiring an increase of constant capital, and in the latter, three): by comparing this increase with the

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

105

growth in the production of articles of consumption we arrive at the more rapid growth of the production of means of production mentioned above. The whole meaning and significance of this law of the more rapid growth of means of production lies in the one fact that the replacement of hand by machine labour—in general the technical progress that accompanies machine industry—calls for the intense development of the production of coal and iron, those real “means of production as means of production.” It is clearly evident from the following statement that the author failed to understand the meaning of this law, and allowed the schemes depicting the process to screen its real nature from him: “Viewed from the side this production of means of production as means of production seems absolutely absurd, but the accumulation of money for money’s sake by Plyushkin 23 was also (?!!) an absolutely absurd process. Both know not what they do.” That is precisely what the Narodniks try their utmost to prove—the absurdity of Russian capitalism, which, they aver, is ruining the people, but is not providing a higher organisation of production. Of course, that is a fairy-tale. There is nothing “absurd” in replacing hand by machine labour: on the contrary, the progressive work of human technique consists precisely in this. The higher the level of technical development the more is human hand labour ousted, being replaced by machines of increasing complexity: an ever larger place is taken in the country’s total production by machines and the articles needed for their manufacture. * These three conclusions must be supplemented by two further remarks.

* Naturally, therefore, it is wrong to divide the development of capitalism into development in breadth and in depth: the entire development proceeds on account of division of labour; there is no “essential” difference between the two features. Actually, however, the difference between them boils down to different stages of technical progress. In the lower stages of the development of capitalist technique—simple co-operation and manufacture—the production of means of production as means of production does not yet exist: it emerges and attains enormous development only at the higher stage—large-scale machine industry.

106

V. I. L E N I N

Firstly, what has been said does not negate the “contradiction in the capitalist mode of production” which Marx spoke of in the following words: “The labourers as buyers of commodities are important for the market. But as sellers of their own commodity—labour-power—capitalist society tends to keep them down to the minimum price” (Das Kapital, Bd. II, S. 303, No. 32). 24 It has been shown above that in capitalist society that part of social production which produces articles of consumption must also grow. The development of the production of means of production merely sets the above-mentioned contradiction aside, but does not abolish it. It can only be eliminated with the elimination of the capitalist mode of production itself. It goes without saying, however, that it is utterly absurd to regard that contradiction as an obstacle to the full development of capitalism in Russia (as the Narodniks are fond of doing); incidentally, that is sufficiently explained by the table. Secondly, when discussing the relation between the growth of capitalism and of the “market,” we must not lose sight of the indubitable fact that the development of capitalism inevitably entails a rising level of requirements for the entire population, including the industrial proletariat. This rise is created in general by the increasing frequency of exchange of products, which results in more frequent contacts between the inhabitants of town and country, of different geographical localities, and so forth. It is also brought about by the crowding together, the concentration of the industrial proletariat, which enhances their class-consciousness and sense of human dignity and enables them to wage a successful struggle against the predatory tendencies of the capitalist system. This law of increasing requirements has manifested itself with full force in the history of Europe—compare, for example, the French proletariat of the end of the eighteenth and of the end of the nineteenth centuries, or the British worker of the 1840’s * and of today.

* Cf. Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. That was a state of most horrible and sordid poverty (in the literal sense of the word) and of utter loss of the sense of human dignity.

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107

This same law operates in Russia, too: the rapid development of commodity economy and capitalism in the post-Reform epoch has caused a rise in the level of requirements of the “peasantry,” too: the peasants have begun to live a “cleaner” life (as regards clothing, housing, and so forth). That this undoubtedly progressive phenomenon must be placed to the credit of Russian capitalism and of nothing else is proved if only by the generally known fact (noted by all the investigators of our village handicrafts and of peasant economy in general) that the peasants of the industrial localities live a far “cleaner” life than the peasants engaged exclusively in agriculture and hardly touched by capitalism. Of course, that phenomenon is manifested primarily and most readily in the adoption of the purely outward, ostentatious aspect of “civilisation,” but only arrant reactionaries like Mr. V. V. are capable of bewailing it and seeing nothing in it but “decline.” VII To understand what, in fact, the “market question” consists of, it is best to compare the Narodnik and Marxist conceptions of the process illustrated by the diagram (showing exchange between the capitalists of sphere A and the direct producers of sphere W) and by the table (showing the conversion of the natural economy of 6 producers into capitalist economy). If we take the diagram we get no explanation at all. Why does capitalism develop? Where does it come from? It is represented as a sort of “accident”; its emergence is attributed either to “we took the wrong road” ... or to “implantation” by the authorities. Why do “the masses become impoverished”? This again is not answered by the diagram, and in place of an answer the Narodniks dispose of the matter with sentimental phrases about a “time-hallowed system,” deviation from the true path, and similar nonsense which the celebrated “subjective method in sociology” is so good at inventing. The inability to explain capitalism, and preference for utopias instead of a study and elucidation of reality, lead

108

V. I. L E N I N

to a denial of the significance and strength of capitalism. It is like a hopeless invalid who has no source from which to draw strength for development. And we shall introduce into the condition of that invalid an insignificant, almost impalpable improvement if we say that he can develop by producing “means of production as means of production.”* That requires the technical development of capitalism, and “we see” that precisely this development is lacking. For that capitalism must embrace the whole country, but we see that “it is not possible for the development of capitalism to become universal.” If, however, we take the table, neither the development of capitalism nor the impoverishment of the people will appear to be accidental. They are necessary concomitants of the growth of commodity production based on the division of social labour. The question of the market is entirely eliminated, because the market is nothing other than the expression of that division of labour and commodity production. The development of capitalism is now seen not only as a possibility [something the author of the paper could at best ** have proved], but also as a necessity, because once social economy is based on the division of labour and the commodity form of the product, technical progress must inevitably lead to the strengthening and deepening of capitalism. The question now arises: why should we accept the second view? By what criterion is it correct? By the facts of contemporary Russian economic reality. The pivot of the table is the transition from commodity to capitalist economy, the differentiation of the commodity producers into capitalists and proletarians. And if we turn to the phenomena of the contemporary social economy of Russia we shall see that the foremost of them is precisely the differentiation of our small producers. If we lake the peasant agriculturists, we shall find that, on

* That is, the replacement of small industrial units by big ones, the ousting of hand by machine labour. ** That is, if he correctly appraised and properly understood the significance of the production of means of production.

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109

the one hand, masses of peasants are giving up the land, losing economic independence, turning into proletarians, and, on the other hand, peasants are continually enlarging their crop areas and adopting improved farming methods. On the one hand, peasants are losing farm property (livestock and implements) and, on the other hand, peasants are acquiring improved implements, are beginning to procure machines, and so forth. [Cf. V. V., Progressive Trends in Peasant Farming.] On the one hand, peasants are giving up the land, selling or leasing their allotments, and, on the other hand, peasants are renting allotments and are greedily buying privately-owned land. All these are commonly known facts, * established long, long ago, the only explanation of which lies in the laws of commodity economy, which splits our “community” peasants, too, into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat. If we take the village handicraftsmen we shall find that in the post-Reform epoch not only have new industries emerged and the old ones developed more rapidly [the result of the differentiation of the agricultural peasantry just mentioned, the result of the progressing social division of labour ** ], but, in addition, the mass of handicraftsmen have been growing poorer and poorer, sinking into dire poverty and losing economic independence, while an insignificant minority have been growing rich at the expense of that mass, accumulating vast amounts of capital, and turning into buyers-up, monopolising the market, and in the overwhelming majority of our handicraft-industries, have, in the end, organised a completely capitalist domestic system of large-scale production. The existence of these two polarising trends among our petty producers clearly shows that capitalism and mass impoverishment, far from precluding, actually condition each other, and irrefutably proves that capitalism is already the main background of the economic life of Russia.

* The peasants themselves very aptly call this process “depeasantising.” (See Agricultural Survey of Nizhni-Vovgorod Gubernia for 1892, Nizhni-Novgoro, 1893, Vol. III. pp. 186-87.) ** One of Mr. Nikolai—on’s biggest theoretical mistakes is that be ignores this phenomenon.

110

V. I. L E N I N

That is why it will be no paradox to say that the fact of the break-up of the peasantry provides the answer to the “question of markets.” One cannot help noting, also, that the very (current) presentation of the notorious “market question” harbours a number of absurdities. The usual formula (see § 1) is based on the most incredible assumptions—that the economic system of society can be built or destroyed at the will of some group of persons—”intellectuals” or the “government” (otherwise the question could not be raised—”can” capitalism develop?, “must” Russia pass through capitalism?, “should” the village community be preserved? and so forth)— that capitalism precludes the impoverishment of the people, that the market is something separate from and independent of capitalism, some special condition for its development. Unless these absurdities are corrected, the question cannot be answered. Indeed, let us imagine that in answer to the question: “Can capitalism develop in Russia, when the masses of the people are poor and are becoming still poorer?” somebody would say the following: “Yes, it can, because capitalism will develop not on account of articles of consumption, but on account of means of production.” Obviously, such an answer is based on the absolutely correct idea that the total productivity of a capitalist nation increases chiefly on account of means of production (i.e., more on account of means of production than of articles of consumption); but it is still more obvious that such an answer cannot advance the solution of the question one iota, just as you cannot draw a correct conclusion from a syllogism with a correct minor premise but an absurd major premise. Such an answer (I repeat) already presupposes that capitalism is developing, is embracing the whole country, passing to a higher technical stage (large-scale machine industry), whereas the question itself is based on the denial of the possibility of capitalism developing and of small-scale production being replaced by large-scale production. The “market question” must be removed from the sphere of fruitless speculation about “possibility” and “necessity” to the solid ground of reality, that of studying and ex-

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

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plaining what shape the Russian economic order is taking, and why it is taking that shape and no other. I shall confine myself to quoting some examples from the material in my possession in order to show concretely on what data this proposition is based. To illustrate the differentiation of the small producers and the fact that not only a process of impoverishment, but also of the creation of large-scale (relatively) bourgeois economy is taking place among them, I shall quote data for three purely agricultural uyezds in different gubernias of European Russia: Dnieper Uyezd in Taurida Gubernia, Novouzensk Uyezd in Samara Gubernia, and Kamyshin Uyezd in Saratov Gubernia. The data are taken from Zemstvo statistical abstracts. To forestall possible statements that the uyezds chosen are not typical (in our outlying regions, which hardly experienced serfdom and largely became populated only under post-Reform, “free” conditions, differentiation has, indeed, made more rapid strides than at the centre) let me say the following: 1) Of the three mainland uyezds of Taurida Gubernia I have chosen Dnieper Uyezd because it is wholly Russian [0.6% are colonist farms] and is inhabited by community peasants. 2) For Novouzensk Uyezd the data concern only the Russian (community) population [see Statistical Returns for Novouzensk Uyezd, pp. 432-39. Column a], and do not include the so-called farmstead peasants, i.e., those community peasants who have left the community and have settled separately on purchased or rented land. The addition of these direct representatives of capitalist farming * would show an even greater differentiation. 3) For Kamyshin Uyezd the data concern only the GreatRussian (community) population. The classification in the abstracts is—for Dnieper Uyezd— according to dessiatines of crop area per household; for the others—according to number of draught animals.

* Indeed, 2,294 farmstead peasants have 123,252 dessiatines under crops (i.e., an average of 53 dessiatines per farmer). They employ 2,662 male labourers (and 234 women). They have over 40,000 horses and oxen. Very many improved implements: see p. 453 of Statistical Returns for Novouzensk Uyezd.

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V. I. L E N I N

Poor group

7,880

40

38,439

11

4.8

{

%

Number of households

Novouzensk

Crop area per household (dess.)

%

Crop area (dess.)

%

Groups of peasants according to economic strength

Number of households

Dnieper Uyezd

10 504

37

10,757

38

10.9

Middle group

8,234

42

137,344

43

16.6

Prosperous group

3,643

18

150,614

46

41.3

7,014

25

19,757

100

326,397

100

17.8

28,275

100

Totals

The poor group includes households—in Dnieper Uyezd— cultivating no land, or with crop areas of up to 10 dessiatines per household; in Novouzensk and Kamyshin uyezds— households having no draught animals or one. The middle group includes households in Dnieper Uyezd having from 10 to 25 dessiatines of crop area; in Novouzensk Uyezd— households having from 2 to 4 draught animals; in Kamyshin Uyezd—households having from 2 to 3 draught animals. The prosperous group includes households having over 25 dessiatines (Dnieper Uyezd), or having more than 4 draught animals (Novouzensk Uyezd) and more than 3 (Kamyshin Uyezd). From these data it is quite evident that the process going on among our agricultural and community peasants is not one of impoverishment and ruin in general, but a process of splitting into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat. A vast mass of peasants (the poor group)—about a half on the average—are losing economic independence. They

113

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

36,007

8

3.4

{

Crop area per household (dess.)

%

Crop area (dess.)

%

Number of households

Crop area per household (dess.)

Kamyshin Uyezd

%

Crop area (dess.)

Uyezd

9,313

54

29,194

20

3.1

4,980

29

52,735

35

10.6

7.75

128,986

29

12

284,069

63

40.5

2,881

17

67,844

45

23.5

449,062

100

15.9

17,174

100

149,703

100

8.7

{

5.7

now have only an insignificant part of the total farming of the local peasanls—some 13% (on the average) of the crop area; the area under crops is 3-4 dessiatines per household. To show what such a crop area means, let me say that in Taurida Gubernia, for a peasant household to subsist exclusively by independent farming, without resorting to so-called “outside employments,” it must have 17-18 dessiatines * under crops. Obviously, the members of the bottom group already subsist far less by their farming than by oulside employments, i.e., the sale of their labourpower. And if we turn to more detailed data characterising the conditions of the peasants in this group we shall see that precisely this group provides the largest contingent of those who give up their farming, lease their allotments, have

* In Samara and Saratov gubernias the amount will be about a third lower, as the local population is less prosperous.

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V. I. L E N I N

no working implements and seek employment elsewhere. The peasants in this group represent our rural proletariat. But, on the other hand, from among these very same community peasants quite another group, of an entirely opposite character, is emerging. The peasants in the top group have crop areas 7 to 10 times larger than those of the peasants in the bottom group. If we compare these crop areas (23-40 dessiatines per household) with the “normal” number of dessiatines under crops that a family needs in order to live comfortably by its farming alone, we shall find that they are double or treble that amount. Obviously, these peasants already engage in agriculture to obtain an income, to trade in grain. They accumulate considerable savings and use them to improve their farms and farming methods; for example, they buy agricultural machines and improved implements. In Novouzensk Uyezd as a whole, for instance, 14% of the householders have improved agricultural implements; of the peasants in the top group 42% of the householders have improved implements (so that the peasants in the top group account for 75% of the total number of households in the uyezd possessing improved agricultural implements), and concentrate in their hands 82% of the total improved implements owned by the “peasantry.” * The peasants in the top group can no longer manage their crop sowing with their own labour force and therefore resort to the hiring of workers: for example, in Novouzensk Uyezd 35% of the householders in the top group employ regular wageworkers (not counting those hired, for instance, for the harvesting, etc.); it is the same in Dnieper Uyezd. In short, the peasants in the top group undoubtedly constitute a bourgeoisie. Their strength now is not based on plundering other producers (as is the strength of the usurers and “kulaks”), but on the independent organisation ** of production: in the hands of this group, which constitutes only one-fifth of the peasantry, is concentrated more than one-half of the total crop area [I take the general average area for all three

* Altogether, the peasants in the uyezd have 5,724 improved implements. ** Which, of course, is also based on plunder, only not the plunder of independent producers, but of workers.

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

115

uyezds]. If we bear in mind that the productivity of labour (i.e., the harvests) of these peasants is immeasurably higher than that of the ground-scratching proletarians in the bottom group, we cannot but draw the conclusion that the chief motive force in grain production is the rural bourgeoisie. What influence was this splitting of the peasantry into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat [the Narodniks see nothing in this process but the “impoverishment of the masses”] bound to have on the size of the “market,” i.e., on the proportion of grain that is converted into a commodity? Obviously, that proportion was bound to grow considerably, because the mass of grain possessed by the peasants in the top group far exceeded their own needs and went to the market; on the other hand, the members of the bottom group had to buy extra grain with money earned by outside work. To quote exact data on this point we must now turn not to Zemstvo statistical abstracts, but to V. Y. Postnikov’s book: Peasant Farming in South Russia. Using Zemstvo statistical data, Postnikov describes peasant farming in three mainland uyezds of Taurida Gubernia (Berdyansk, Melitopol and Dnieper) and analyses that farming according to different groups of peasants [divided into 6 categories according to crop area: 1) cultivating no land; 2) cultivating up to 5 dessiatines; 3) from 5 to 10 dessiatines; 4) 10 to 25 dessiatines; 5) 25 to 50 dessiatines; 6) over 50 dessiatines]. Investigating the relation of the different groups to the market, the author divides the crop area of each farm into the following 4 parts: 1) the farm-service area—as Postnikov calls the part of the crop area which provides the seed necessary for sowing; 2) the food area—provides grain for the sustenance of the family and labourers; 3) the fodder area—provides fodder for the draught animals, and lastly, 4) the commercial or market area provides the product which is converted into a commodity and disposed of on the market. It goes without saying that only the last area provides income in cash, whereas the others yield it in kind, i.e., provide a product that is consumed on the farm. Calculating the size of each of these plots in the different crop-area groups of the peasantry, Postnikov presents the following table:

116

V. I. L E N I N

Average under crops in each group

Per household

Of which commercial areas (dessiatines)

90.7 42.3 —39

In the 3 uyezds of Taurida Gubernia

(rubles) —

34,070

—

3.5 dess.

16,815

Per dess. under crops

Commercial area

Fodder area

6

Cash income

Total under crops (dessiatines)

Cultivating up to 5 dess.

Food area

Farm-service area

Out of 100 dess. under crops

—

”

5 to 10 ”

6

44.7 37.5 +11.8 3.77

30

140,426

”

10 to 25 ”

6

27.5 30

36.5 11.68

191

540,093 194,433 16.4

”

25 to 50 ”

6

17.0 25

52

16.64

574

494,095 256,929 34.5

”

over 50 ”

6

12.0 21

61

19.52 1,500

Per uyzed

6

42

8

230,583 140,656 75 1,439,267 608,869

17-18

Note to table:

1) Postnikov does not give the penultimate column; I compiled it myself. 2) Postnikov calculates the cash income on the assumption that the entire commercial area is planted to wheat, and taking the average yield add the average price of grain.

We see from these data that the bigger the farm, the more it assurmes a commodity character and the larger is the proportion of grain grown for sale [12-36-52-61% according to group]. The principal grain growers, the peasants in the two top groups (they have more than half the total area under crops), sell more than half of their total agricultural product [52% and 61%]. If the peasantry were not split up into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat, if, in other words, the area under crops were divided among all the “peasants” “equally,” all of them would then belong to the middle group (those cultivating 10 to 25 dessiatines), and only 36% of the total grain, i.e., the product of 518,136 dessiatines of crop area (36% of 1,439,267 =518,136), would appear on the market. But now, as can be

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

117

seen from the table, 42% of the total grain, the product of 608,869 dessiatines, goes to the market. Thus, the “impoverishment of the masses,” the complete decline of the farms of 40% of the peasants (the poor group, i.e., those cultivating up to 10 dessiatines), the formation of a rural proletariat have led to the produce of 90,000 * dessiatines of land under crops being thrown on to the market. I do not at all want to say that the growth of the “market” as a consequence of the differentiation of the peasantry was limited only to this. Far from it. We have seen, for example, that the peasants acquire improved implements? i.e., turn their savings to the “production of means of production.” We have seen that, in addition to grain, another commodity, human labour-power, has come on to the market. I do not refer to all this only because I have quoted this example for a narrow and specific purpose: to show that here in Russia the impoverishment of the masses is actually leading to the strengthening of commodity and capitalist economy. I deliberately chose a product like grain, which everywhere and always is the last and the slowest to be drawn into commodity circulation. And that is why I took an exclusively agricultural locality. I shall now take another example, relating to a purely industrial area—Moscow Gubernia. Peasant farming is described by the Zemstvo statisticians in volumes VI and VII of Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia, which contain a number of excellent essays on the handicraft industries. I shall confine myself to quoting one passage from the essay on “The Lace Industry” ** which explains how and why the post-Reform epoch saw a particularly rapid development of peasant handicrafts. The lace industry arose in the twenties of the present century in two neighbouring villages of Voronovo Volost, Podolsk Uyezd. “In the 1840’s it began to spread slowly to other nearby villages, although it did not yet cover a big area. But beginning with the sixties and especially during

* 90,733 dessiatines= 6.3% of the total crop area. ** Statistical Returns for Moscow Gubernia. Section

of Economic Statistics VoI. VI, Issue II, Handicraft Industries of Moscow Gubernia, Issue II, Moscow, 1880.

118

V. I. L E N I N

the last three or four years, it has spread rapidly to the surrounding countryside.” Of the 32 villages in which this industry is practised at the present time it began: in 2 villages in 1820 ” 4 ” ” 1840 ” 5 ” ” the 1860’s ” 7 ” ” 1870-1875 ” 14 ” ” 1876-1879 ” 4 ” ” 1840 “If we investigate the causes of this phenomenon,” says the author of the essay, “i.e., the extremely rapid spread of the industry precisely in the last few years, we shall find that, on the one hand, during that period the peasants’ living conditions greatly deteriorated and, on the other hand, that the requirements of the population—that part of it which is in more favourable circumstances—considerably increased.” In confirmation of this the author borrows from the Moscow Zemstvo statistics the following data, which I give in the form of a table. * “These figures,” continues the author, “are eloquent proof that the total number of horses, cows and small livestock in that volost increased, but this increased prosperity fell to the lot of certain individuals, namely, the category of householders owning 2-3 and more horses.... “... Consequently, we see that, side by side with an increase in the number of peasants who have neither cows nor horses, there is an increase in the number of those who stop cultivating their land: they have no animals, and, therefore, not enough manure; the land becomes exhausted, it is not worth tilling; to get food for themselves and their families, to avert starvation, it is not enough for the males alone to engage in some industry—they did that previously, when they were free from farm work—now, other members of the family must also seek outside employment.... “... The figures we gave in the tables showed us something else; in those villages there was also an increase in the number

* I have omitted data on the distribution of cows (the conclusion is the same) and added the percentages. [See table on p. 119.— Ed. Eng. ed.]

In Voronovo Volost

More than 3 horses

3 horses

2 horses

1 horse

No horses

Small livestock

NOT FOR COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTION 1 horse

Cows

Horses

Cows

Horses

Number of householders

52

465 626 285 231 1,166

26% 37% 25% 8% 4% 29% 39% 18% 14%

1,244 1,607 1,726 25 27 38 319 465 313 95

7%

Cultivating allotment

Number of allotmentholding householders

Total

567 596 210 100 1,067

2 horses

22% 46% 24% 6% 2% 39% 40% 14%

22




1,233 1,473 1,472 22 22 30 276 567 298 70

FROM MARX TO MAO

In 1877 there were

In 1869 there were

3 horses

Number of horses owned by householders having

More than 3 horses

Number of householders owning

7%

75

5 196

9%

92

82.5% 0.5% 17%

965

84%

900

themselves

Per 100 persons of both sexes

with hired labour

Number of

Not cultivating land

VORONOVO VOLOST, PODOLSK UYEZD:

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

119

120

V. I. L E N I N

of people having 2-3 horses, or cows. Consequently, the prosperity of those peasants increased, and yet, at the same time, we said that ‘all the women and children in such and such a village engage in industry.’ How is this to be explained? ... To explain this phenomenon we must see what sort of life is lived in those villages, and become more closely acquainted with their domestic conditions, and then, perhaps, ascertain what accounts for this strong urge to produce goods for the market. “We shall not, of course, stop here to investigate in detail under what fortunate circumstances there gradually emerge from the peasant population stronger individuals, stronger families, what conditions give rise to their prosperity and what social conditions enable that prosperity, once it has appeared, to grow rapidly and cause it to grow to such an extent as to considerably distinguish one section of the village inhabitants from the other. To follow this process it is sufficient to point to one of the most ordinary occurrences in a peasant village. In a village, a certain peasant is reputed among his fellow villagers to be a healthy, strong, sober working man. He has a large family, mostly sons, also distinguished for their physical strength and good traits. They all live together; there is no dividing up. They get an allotment for 4-5 persons. It does not, of course, require the labour of all the members of the family to cultivate it. And so, two or three of the sons regularly engage in some outside or local industry, and only during the haymaking season do they drop their industry for a short time and help the family with the field work. The individual members of the family do not keep their earnings, but pool them. Given other favourable circumstances, the combined income considerably exceeds the expenditure necessary to satisfy the family’s requirements. Money is saved and, as a consequence, the family is able to engage in industry under better conditions: it can buy raw materials for cash at first hand, it can sell the goods produced when they fetch a good price, and can dispense with the services of all kinds of ‘hirers-out of labour,’ men and women dealers, and so forth. “It becomes possible to hire a worker or two, or give out work to be done at home by poor peasants who have lost the possibility of doing any job quite independently. Due

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121

to these and similar circumstances, the strong family we have mentioned is able to obtain profit not only from its own labour. We are not speaking here, of course, of those cases where individuals known as kulaks, sharks, emerge from those families; we are examining the most ordinary occurrences among the peasant population. The tables given in Volume II of the Abstract and in Part I of Volume VI clearly show that as the conditions of one section of the peasantry grow worse, in the majority of cases there is an increase in the prosperity of the other, smaller section, or of individual members. “As industrial occupation spreads, intercourse with the outside world, with the town, in this case with Moscow, becomes more frequent, and some of the Moscow customs gradually penetrate into the village and are met with at first precisely in these more prosperous families. They buy samovars, table crockery and glass, they wear ‘neater’ clothes. Whereas at first this neatness of clothing takes the shape, among men, of boots in place of bast shoes, among the women leather shoes and boots are the crowning glory, so to speak, of neater clothing; they prefer bright, motley calicoes and kerchiefs, figured woollen shawls, and similar charms.... “... In the peasant family it has been the custom ‘for ages’ for the wife to clothe her husband, herself and the children.... As long as they grew their own flax, less money had to be spent on the purchase of cloth and other materials required for clothing, and this money was obtained from the sale of poultry, eggs, mushrooms, berries, a spare skein of yarn, or piece of linen. All the rest was made at home. It was such circumstances, i.e., the domestic production of all those articles which the peasant women were expected to make, and the fact that they spent on it all the time they had free from field work, that explain, in the present case, the extremely slow development of the lace industry in the villages in Voronovo Volost. Lace was made mainly by the young women of the more prosperous or of the larger families, where it was not necessary for all the women to spin flax or weave linen. But cheap calico gradually began to oust linen, and to this other circumstances were added: either the flax crop failed, or the wife wanted to make her husband a red calico shirt and herself a smarter dress, and so the custom

122

V. I. L E N I N

of weaving various sorts of linen and kerchiefs at home for peasants’ clothing gradually died out, or became very restricted. And the clothing itself underwent a change, partly because homespun cloth was displaced by factory-made cloth.... “... That explains why the majority of the population do all they can to make articles for sale, and even put their children to this work.” This artless narrative of a careful observer clearly shows how the process of division of social labour takes place among our peasant masses, how it leads to the enhancement of commodity production [and, consequently, of the market], and how this commodity production, of itself, i.e., by virtue of the very relations in which it places the producer to the market, leads to the purchase and sale of labour-power becoming “a most ordinary occurrence.” VIII In conclusion, it will, perhaps, be worth while to illustrate the disputed issue which, I think, is overburdened with abstractions, diagrams and formulae—by an examination of the argument advanced by one of the latest and most prominent representatives of “current views.” I am referring to Mr. Nikolai—on. * He regards as the greatest “obstacle” to the development of capitalism in Russia the “contraction” of the home market and the “diminution” of the purchasing power of the peasants. The capitalisation of the handicraft industries, he says, ousted the domestic production of goods; the peasants had to buy their clothing. To obtain the money for this, the peasant took to the expansion of his crop area, and as the allotments were inadequate he carried this expansion far beyond the limits of rational farming; he raised the payment for rented land to scandalous heights, and in the end he was ruined. Capitalism dug its own grave, it brought “people’s economy” to the frightful crisis of 1891 and ... stopped, having no ground under its feet, unable to “continue along the same path.” * It goes without saying that there can be no question here of examining his entire work, a separate book would be required for that. We can only examine one of his favourite arguments.

ON THE SO-CALLED MARKET QUESTION

123

Realising that “we have departed from the time-hallowed people’s system” Russia is now waiting ... for orders from the authorities “to infuse large-scale production into the village community.” Wherein lies the absurdity of this “ever new” (for the Russian Narodniks) theory? Is it that its author fails to understand the significance of the “production of means of production as means of production”? Of course, not. Mr. Nik.—on knows that law very well and even mentions that it operates in our country, too (pp. 186, 203-204). True, in view of his faculty for castigating himself with contradictions, he sometimes (cf. p. 123) forgets about that law, but it is obvious that the correction of such contradictions would not in the least correct the author’s main (above-quoted) argument. The absurdity of his theory lies in his inability to explain capitalism in this country and in basing his arguments about it on pure fictions. The “peasantry,” who were ruined by the ousting of homemade products by factory-made products, are regarded by Mr. Nik.—on as something homogeneous, internally cohesive, and reacting to all the events of life as one man. Nothing of the kind exists in reality. Commodity production could not have arisen in Russia if the productive units (the peasant households) had not existed separately, and everybody knows that actually each of our peasants conducts his farming separately and independently of his fellows; he carries on the production of products, which become his private property, at his own exclusive risk; he enters into relation with the “market” on his own. Let us see how matters stand among the “peasantry.” “Being in need of money, the peasant enlarges his crop area excessively and is ruined.” But only the prosperous peasant can enlarge his crop area, the one who has seed for sowing, and a sufficient quantity of livestock and implements. Such peasants (and they, as we know, are the minority) do, indeed, extend their crop areas and expand their farming to such an extent that they cannot cope with it without the aid of hired labourers. The majority of peasants, however, are quite unable to meet their need for money by expanding their farming, for they

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have no stocks, or sufficient means of production. Such a peasant, in order to obtain money, seeks “outside employments,” i.e., takes his labour-power and not his product to the market. Naturally, work away from home entails a further decline in farming, and in the end the peasant leases his allotment to a rich fellow community member, who rounds off his farm and, of course, does not himself consume the product of the rented allotment, but sends it to the market. We get the “impoverishment of the people,” the growth of capitalism and the expansion of the market. But that is not all. Our rich peasant, fully occupied by his extended farming, can no longer produce as hitherto for his own needs, let us say footwear: it is more advantageous for him to buy it. As to the impoverished peasant, he, too, has to buy footwear; he cannot produce it on his farm for the simple reason that he no longer has one. There arises a demand for footwear and a supply of grain, produced in abundance by the enterprising peasant, who touches the soul of Mr. V. V. with the progressive trend of his farming. The neighbouring handicraft footwear-makers find themselves in the same position as the agriculturists just described: to buy grain, of which the declining farm yields too little, production must be expanded. Again, of course, production is expanded only by the handicraftsman who has savings, i.e., the representative of the minority; he is able to hire workers, or give work out to poor peasants to be done at home. The members of the majority of handicraftsmen, however, cannot even think of enlarging their workshops: they are glad to “get work” from the moneyed buyer-up, i.e., to find a purchaser of their only commodity—their labour-power. Again we get the impoverishment of the people, the growth of capitalism and the expansion of the market; a new impetus is given to the further development and intensification of the social division of labour. Where will that movement end? Nobody can say, just as nobody can say where it began, and after all that is not important. The important thing is that we have before us a single, living, organic process, the process of the development of commodity economy and the growth of capitalism. “Depeasantising” in the countryside shows us the beginning of this process, its genesis, its early stages; large-scale capitalism in the towns shows us the end of the process, its

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tendency. Try to tear these phenomena apart, try to examine them separately and independently of each other and you will not get your argument to hang together; you will be unable to explain either one phenomenon or the other, either the impoverishment of the people or the growth of capitalism. Mostly, however, those who advance such arguments, which have neither beginning nor end, being unable to explain the process, break off the investigation with the statement that one of the two phenomena equally unintelligible to them [and, of course, precisely the one that contradicts “the morally developed sense of the critically thinking individual”] is “absurd,” “accidental,” “hangs in the air.” In actual fact, what is “hanging in the air” is of course only their own arguments.

Last manuscript page of Lenin’s On the So-Called Market Question, 1893 (Reduced)

dellaC-oS eht nO s’nineL fo egap tpircsunam tsaL )decudeR( 3981 ,noitseuQ tekraM

WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE AND HOW THEY FIGHT THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS (A REPLY TO ARTICLES IN RUSSKOYE BOGATSTVO OPPOSING THE MARXISTS 25)

Written in the spring and summer of 1 8 9 4 First published in 1 8 9 4

Published according to the hectographed edition, 1 8 9 4

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Russkoye Bogatstvo 26 has launched a campaign against the Social-Democrats. Last year, in issue No. 10, one of the leading lights of this magazine, Mr. N. Mikhailovsky, announced a forthcoming “polemic” against “our so-called Marxists, or Social-Democrats.” 27 Then followed Mr. S. Krivenko’s article “Our Cultural Free Lances” (No. 12), and Mr. N. Mikhailovsky’s “Literature and Life” (Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1894, Nos. 1 and 2). As to the magazine’s own views on our economic realities, these have been most fully expounded by Mr. S. Yuzhakov in the article “Problems of Russia’s Economic Development” (in Nos. 11 and 12). While in general claiming to present the ideas and tactics of true “friends of the people” in their magazine, these gentlemen are arch-enemies of Social-Democracy. So let us take a closer look at these “friends of the people,” their criticism of Marxism, their ideas and their tactics. Mr. N. Mikhailovsky devotes his attention chiefly to the theoretical principles of Marxism and therefore makes a special investigation of the materialist conception of history. After outlining in general the contents of the voluminous Marxist literature enunciating this doctrine, Mr. Mikhailovsky opens his criticism with the following tirade: “First of all,” he says, “the question naturally arises: in which of his works did Marx expound his materialist conception of history? In Capital he gave us an example of the combination of logical force with erudition, with a scrupulous investigation of all the economic literature and of

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the pertinent facts. He brought to light theoreticians of economic science long forgotten or unknown to anybody today, and did not overlook the most minute details in factory inspectors’ reports or experts’ evidence before various special commissions; in a word, he examined this enormous mass of factual material, partly in order to provide arguments for his economic theories and partly to illustrate them. If he has created a ‘completely new’ conception of the historical process, if he has explained the whole past of mankind from a new viewpoint and has summarised all hitherto existing theories on the philosophy of history, then he has done so, of course, with equal zeal: he has, indeed, reviewed and subjected to critical analysis all the known theories of the historical process, and worked over a mass of facts of world history. The comparison with Darwin, so customary in Marxist literature, serves still more to confirm this idea. What does Darwin’s whole work amount to? Certain closely interconnected generalising ideas crowning a veritable Mont Blanc of factual material. But where is the appropriate work by Marx? It does not exist. And not only does no such work by Marx exist, but there is none to be found in all Marxist literature, despite its voluminous and extensive character.” The whole tirade is highly characteristic and helps us to understand how little the public understand Capital and Marx. Overwhelmed by the tremendously convincing way he states his case, they bow and scrape before Marx, laud him, and at the same time entirely lose sight of the basic content of his doctrine and quite calmly continue to sing the old songs of “subjective sociology.” In this connection one cannot help recalling the very apt epigraph Kautsky selected for his book on the economic teachings of Marx; Wer wird nicht einen Klopstock loben? Doch wird ihn jeder lesen? Nein. Wir wollen weniger erhoben, Und fleissiger gelesen sein!*

* Who would not praise a Klopstock? But will everybody read him? No. We would like to be exalted less, but read more diligently! (Lessing).—Ed.

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Just so! Mr. Mikhailovsky should praise Marx less and read him more diligently, or, better still, give more serious thought to what he is reading. “In Capital Marx gave us an example of the combination of logical force with erudition,” says Mr. Mikhailovsky. In this phrase Mr. Mikhailovsky has given us an example of a brilliant phrase combined with lack of substance—a certain Marxist observed. And the observation is a very just one. How, indeed, did this logical force of Marx’s manifest itself? What were its effects? Reading the above tirade by Mr. Mikhailovsky, one might think that this force was concentrated entirely on “economic theories,” in the narrowest sense of the term—and nothing more. And in order to emphasise still further the narrow limits of the field in which Marx manifested the force of his logic, Mr. Mikhailovsky lays stress on “most minute details,” on “scrupulosity,” on “theoreticians unknown to anybody” and so forth. It would appear that Marx contributed nothing essentially new or noteworthy to the methods of constructing these theories, that he left the bounds of economic science where the earlier economists had them, without extending them, without contributing a “completely new” conception of the science itself. Yet anybody who has read Capital knows that this is absolutely untrue. In this connection one cannot but recall what Mr. Mikhailovsky wrote about Marx sixteen years ago when arguing with that vulgar bourgeois, Mr. Y. Zhukovsky. 28 Perhaps the times were different, perhaps sentiments were fresher—at any rate, both the tone and the content of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s article were then entirely different. “‘... It is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the law of development (in the original: das oekonomische Bewegungsgesetz—the economic law of motion) of modern society,’ Karl Marx says in reference to his Capital, and he adheres strictly to this programme.” This is what Mr. Mikhailovsky said in 1877. Let us examine this programme more closely., which—as the critic admits—has been strictly adhered to. It is “to lay bare the economic law of development of modern society.” The very formulation confronts us with several questions that require explanation. Why does Marx speak of “modern”

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society, when all the economists who preceded him spoke of society in general? In what sense does he use the word “modern,” by what features does he distinguish this modern society? And further, what is meant by the economic law of motion of society? We are accustomed to hear from economists—and this, by the way, is one of the favourite ideas of the publicists and economists of the milieu to which the Russkoye Bogatstvo belongs—that only the production of values is subject to solely economic laws, whereas distribution, they declare, depends on politics, on the nature of the influence exercised on society by the government, the intelligentsia and so forth. In what sense, then, does Marx speak of the economic law of motion of society, even referring to this law as a Naturgesetz—a law of nature? How are we to understand this, when so many of our native sociologists have covered reams of paper to show that social phenomena are particularly distinct from the phenomena of natural history, and that therefore the investigation of the former requires the employment of an absolutely distinct “subjective method in sociology.” All these perplexities arise naturally and necessarily, and, of course, only an absolute ignoramus would evade them when speaking of Capital. To elucidate these questions, we shall first quote one more passage from the same Preface to Capital—only a few lines lower down: “[From] my standpoint,” says Marx, “the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history.”29 It will be sufficient to compare, say, the two passages just quoted from the Preface in order to see that it is here that we have the basic idea of Capital, pursued, as we have heard, with strict consistency and with rare logical force. First let us note two circumstances regarding all this: Marx speaks of one “economic formation of society” only, the capitalist formation, that is, he says that he investigated the law of development of this formation only and of no other. That is the first. And secondly, let us note the methods Marx used in working out his deductions. These methods consisted, as we have just heard from Mr. Mikhailovsky, in a “scrupulous investigation of the pertinent facts.” Now let us examine this basic idea of Capital, which our

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subjective philosopher so adroitly tried to evade. In what, properly speaking, does the concept of the economic formation of society consist? and in what sense can and must the development of such a formation be regarded as a process of natural history?—such are the questions that now confront us. I have already pointed out that from the standpoint of the old (not old for Russia) economists and sociologists, the concept of the economic formation of society is entirely superfluous: they talk of society in general, they argue with the Spencers about the nature of society in general, about the aim and essence of society in general, and so forth. In their reasonings, these subjective sociologists rely on arguments such as—the aim of society is to benefit all its members, that justice, therefore, demands such and such an organisation, and that a system that is out of harmony with this ideal organisation (“Sociology must start with some utopia”—these words of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s, one of the authors of the subjective method, splendidly typify the essence of their methods) is abnormal and should be set aside. “The essential task of sociology,” Mr. Mikhailovsky, for instance, argues, “is to ascertain the social conditions under which any particular requirement of human nature is satisfied.” As you see, what interests this sociologist is only a society that satisfies human nature, and not at all some strange formations of society, which, moreover, may be based on a phenomenon so out of harmony with “human nature” as the enslavement of the majority by the minority. You also see that from the standpoint of this sociologist there can be no question of regarding the development of society as a process of natural history. (“Having accepted something as desirable or undesirable, the sociologist must discover the conditions under which the desirable can be realised, or the undesirable eliminated”—“under which such and such ideals can be realised”—this same Mr. Mikhailovsky reasons.) What is more, there can be no talk even of development, but only of various deviations from the “desirable,” of “defects” that have occurred in history as a result ... as a result of the fact that people were not clever enough, were unable properly to understand what human nature demands, were unable to discover the conditions for the realisation of such a rational system. It is obvious that Marx’s basic idea

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that the development of the social-economic formations is a process of natural history cuts at the very root of this childish morality which lays claim to the title of sociology. By what means did Marx arrive at this basic idea? He did so by singling out the economic sphere from the various spheres of social life, by singling out production relations from all social relations as being basic, primary, determining all other relations. Marx himself has described the course of his reasoning on this question as follows: “The first work which I undertook for a solution of the doubts which assailed me was a critical review of the Hegelian philosophy of right.... 30 My investigation led to the result that legal relations as well as forms of state are to be grasped neither from themselves nor from the so-called general development of the human mind, but rather have their roots in the material conditions of life, the sum-total of which Hegel, following the example of the Englishmen and Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, combines under the name of ‘civil society,’ that, however, the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.... The general result at which I arrived ... can be briefly formulated as follows: in the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations ... relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum-total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.

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In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the conditions of production, which should be established in terms of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological—forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.... In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society.” 31 This idea of materialism in sociology was in itself a stroke of genius. Naturally, for the time being it was only a hypothesis, but one which first created the possibility of a strictly scientific approach to historical and social problems. Hitherto, not knowing how to get down to the simplest primary relations such as those of production, the sociologists undertook the direct investigation and study of political and legal forms, stumbled on the fact that these forms emerge from certain of mankind’s ideas in the period in question—and there they stopped; it appeared as if social relations are consciously established by men. But this conclusion, fully expressed in the idea of the Contrat social32 (traces of which are very noticeable in all systems of utopian socialism), was in complete contradiction to all historical observations. It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times. Materialism removed this contradiction by carrying the analysis deeper, to the origin of man’s social ideas themselves; and its conclusion that the course

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of ideas depends on the course of things is the only one compatible with scientific psychology. Further, and from yet another aspect, this hypothesis was the first to elevate sociology to the level of a science. Hitherto, sociologists had found it difficult to distinguish the important and the unimportant in the complex network of social phenomena (that is the root of subjectivism in sociology) and had been unable to discover any objective criterion for such a demarcation Materialism provided an absolutely objective criterion by singling out “production relations” as the structure of society, and by making it possible to apply to these relations that general scientific criterion of recurrence whose applicability to sociology the subjectivists denied. So long as they confined themselves to ideological social relations (i.e., such as, before taking shape, pass through man’s consciousness * ) they could not observe recurrence and regularity in the social phenomena of the various countries, and their science was at best only a description of these phenomena, a collection of raw material. The analysis of material social relations (i.e., of those that take shape without passing through man’s consciousness: when exchanging products men enter into production relations without even realising that there is a social relation of production here)—the analysis of material social relations at once made it possible to observe recurrence and regularity and to generalise the systems of the various countries in the single fundamental concept: social formation. It was this generalisation alone that made it possible to proceed from the description of social phenomena (and their evaluation from the standpoint of an ideal) to their strictly scientific analysis, which isolates, let us say by way of example, that which distinguishes one capitalist country from another and investigates that which is common to all of them. Thirdly, and finally, another reason why this hypothesis for the first time made a scientific sociology possible was that only the reduction of social relations to production relations and of the latter to the level of the productive forces, provided a firm basis for the conception that the development of

* We are, of course, referring all the time to the consciousness of social relations and no others.

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formations of society is a process of natural history. And it goes without saying that without such a view there can be no social science. (The subjectivists, for instance, although they admitted that historical phenomena conform to law, were incapable of regarding their evolution as a process of natural history, precisely because they came to a halt before man’s social ideas and aims and were unable to reduce them to material social relations.) Then, however, Marx, who had expressed this hypothesis in the forties, set out to study the factual (nota bene) material. He took one of the social-economic formations— the system of commodity production—and on the basis of a vast mass of data (which he studied for not less than twentyfive years) gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing the functioning of this formation and its development. This analysis is confined exclusively to production relations between members of society: without ever resorting to features outside the sphere of these production relations for an explanation, Marx makes it possible to discern how the commodity organisation of social economy develops, how it becomes transformed into capitalist organisation, creating antagonistic classes (antagonistic within the bounds of production relations), the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, how it develops the productivity of social labour, and thereby introduces an element that becomes irreconcilably contradictory to the foundations of this capitalist organisation itself. Such is the skeleton of Capital. The whole point, however, is that Marx did not content himself with this skeleton, that he did not confine himself to “economic theory” in the ordinary sense of the term, that, while explaining the structure and development of the given formation of society exclusively through production relations, he nevertheless everywhere and incessantly scrutinised the superstructure corresponding to these production relations and clothed the skeleton in flesh and blood. The reason Capital has enjoyed such tremendous success is that this book by a “German economist” showed the whole capitalist social formation to the reader as a living thing—with its everyday aspects, with the actual social manifestation of the class antagonism inherent in production relations, with the bourgeois political superstructure that protects the rule of the capitalist class, with

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the bourgeois ideas of liberty, equality and so forth, with the bourgeois family relationships. It will now be clear that the comparison with Darwin is perfectly accurate: Capital is nothing but “certain closely interconnected generalising ideas crowning a veritable Mont Blanc of factual material.” And if anybody has read Capital and contrived not to notice these generalising ideas, it is not the fault of Marx, who, as we have seen, pointed to those ideas even in the preface. And that is not all; such a comparison is correct not only from the external aspect (which for some unknown reason particularly interests Mr. Mikhailovsky), but also from the internal aspect. Just as Darwin put an end to the view of animal and plant species being unconnected, fortuitous, “created by God” and immutable, and was the first to put biology on an absolutely scientific basis by establishing the mutability and the succession of species, so Marx put an end to the view of society being a mechanical aggregation of individuals which allows of all sorts of modification at the will of the authorities (or, if you like, at the will of society and the government) and which emerges and changes casually, and was the first to put sociology on a scientific basis by establishing the concept of the economic formation of society as the sum-total of given production relations, by establishing the fact that the development of such formations is a process of natural history. Now—since the appearance of Capital—the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society—formation of society, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc.—another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the “pertinent facts” as materialism is, that is just as capable of presenting a living picture of a definite formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation—until then the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science. Materialism is not “primarily a scientific conception of history,” as Mr. Mikhailovsky thinks, but the only scientific conception of it. And now, can you imagine anything funnier than the fact that there are people who have read Capital without dis-

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covering any materialism there! Where is it?—asks Mr. Mikhailovsky in sincere perplexity. He has read the Communist Manifesto and failed to notice that the explanation it gives of modern systems—legal, political, family, religious and philosophical—is a materialist one, and that even the criticism of the socialist and communist theories seeks and finds their roots in such and such production relations. He has read The Poverty of Philosophy and failed to notice that its analysis of Proudhon’s sociology is made from the materialist standpoint, that the criticism of the solution propounded by Proudhon for the most diverse historical problems is based on the principles of materialism, and that the author’s own indications as to where the data for the solution of these problems are to be sought all amount to references to production relations. He has read Capital and failed to notice that he had before him a model of scientific, materialist analysis of one—the most complex—formation of society, a model recognised by all and surpassed by none. And here he sits and exercises his mighty brain over the profound problem: “In which of his works did Marx expound his materialist conception of history?” Anybody acquainted with Marx would answer this question by another: in which of his works did Marx not expound his materialist conception of history? But Mr. Mikhailovsky will probably learn of Marx’s materialist investigations only when they are classified and properly indexed in some sophistical work on history by some Kareyev under the heading “Economic Materialism.” But the funniest of all is that Mr. Mikhailovsky accuses Marx of not having “reviewed (sic!) all the known theories of the historical process.” This is amusing indeed. Of what did nine-tenths of these theories consist? Of purely a priori, dogmatic, abstract discourses on: what is society, what is progress? and the like. (I purposely take examples which are dear to the heart and mind of Mr. Mikhailovsky.) But, then, such theories are useless because of the very fact that they exist, they are useless because of their basic methods, because of their solid unrelieved metaphysics. For, to begin by asking what is society and what is progress, is to begin

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at the end. Where will you get a conception of society and progress in general if you have not studied a single social formation in particular, if you have not even been able to establish this conception, if you have not even been able to approach a serious factual investigation, an objective analysis of social relations of any kind ? This is a most obvious symptom of metaphysics, with which every science began: as long as people did not know how to set about studying the facts, they always invented a priori general theories, which were always sterile. The metaphysician-chemist, still unable to make a factual investigation of chemical processes, concocts a theory about chemical affinity as a force. The metaphysician-biologist talks about the nature of life and the vital force. The metaphysician-psychologist argues about the nature of the soul. Here it is the method itself that is absurd. You cannot argue about the soul without having explained psychical processes in particular: here progress must consist precisely in abandoning general theories and philosophical discourses about the nature of the soul, and in being able to put the study of the facts about particular psychical processes on a scientific footing. Therefore, Mr. Mikhailovsky’s accusation is exactly similar to that of a metaphysician-psychologist, who has spent all his life writing “investigations” into the nature of the soul (without knowing exactly how to explain a single psychical phenomenon, even the simplest), and then starts accusing a scientific psychologist of not having reviewed all the known theories of the soul. He, the scientific psychologist, has discarded philosophical theories of the soul and set about making a direct study of the material substratum of psychical phenomena—the nervous processes—and has produced, let us say, an analysis and explanation of some one or more psychological processes. And our metaphysician-psychologist reads this work and praises it: the description of the processes and the study of the facts, he says, are good; but he is not satisfied. “Pardon me,” he exclaims excitedly, hearing people around him speak of the absolutely new conception of psychology produced by this scientist, of his special method of scientific psychology. “Pardon me,” the philosopher cries heatedly, “in what work is this method expounded? Why, this work contains ‘nothing but facts.’ There is no trace

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in it of a review of ‘all the known philosophical theories of the soul.’ It is not the appropriate work at all!” In the same way, of course, neither is Capital the appropriate work for a metaphysician-sociologist who does not realise the sterility of a priori arguments about the nature of society and does not understand that such methods, instead of contributing to a study and elucidation of the problem, only serve to insinuate into the concept “society” either the bourgeois ideas of the British shopkeeper or the pettybourgeois socialist ideals of the Russian democrat—and nothing more. That is why all these theories of the philosophy of history arose and burst like soap-bubbles, being at best a symptom of the social ideas and relations of their time, and not advancing one hair’s breadth man’s understanding of even a few, but real, social relations (and not such as “harmonise with human nature”). The gigantic step forward taken by Marx in this respect consisted precisely in that he discarded all these arguments about society and progress in general and produced a scientific analysis of one society and of one progress—capitalist. And Mr. Mikhailovsky blames him for beginning at the beginning and not at the end, for having begun with an analysis of the facts and not with final conclusions, with a study of particular, historically-determined social relations and not with general theories about what these social relations consist of in general! And he asks: “Where is the appropriate work?” O, most wise subjective sociologist!! If our subjective philosopher had confined himself to mere perplexity as to where, in which work, materialism is substantiated, it would not have been so bad. But, despite the fact that he did not find even an exposition, let alone a substantiation, of the materialist conception of history anywhere (and maybe just because he did not), he begins to ascribe to this doctrine claims which it has never made. He quotes a passage from Blos to the effect that Marx proclaimed an entirely new conception of history, and without further ado goes on to declare that this theory claims to have “explained to mankind its past,” to have explained “the whole (sic!!?) past of mankind,” and so on. But this is utterly false! The theory only claims to explain the capitalist social organisation, and no other. If the application of materialism to the analysis

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and explanation of one social formation yielded such brilliant results, it is quite natural that materialism in history already ceases to be a mere hypothesis and becomes a scientifically tested theory; it is quite natural that the necessity for such a method extends to other social formations, even though they have not been subjected to special factual investigation and detailed analysis—just as the idea of transformism, which has been proved in relation to quite a large number of facts, is extended to the whole realm of biology, even though it has not yet been possible to establish with precision the fact of their transformation for certain species of animals and plants. And just as transformism does not at all claim to explain the “whole” history of the formation of species, but only to place the methods of this explanation on a scientific basis, so materialism in history has never claimed to explain everything, but merely to indicate the “only scientific,” to use Marx’s expression (Capital), method of explaining history. 33 One may therefore judge how ingenious, earnest and seemly are the methods of controversy employed by Mr. Mikhailovsky when he first misrepresents Marx by ascribing to materialism in history the absurd claims of “explaining everything,” of finding “the key to all historical locks” (claims which were, of course, refuted by Marx immediately and in very biting style in his “Letter”34 on Mikhailovsky’s articles), then pulls faces at these claims of his own invention, and, finally, accurately citing Engels’ ideas—accurately because in this case a quotation and not a paraphrase is given—to the effect that political economy as understood by the materialists “has still to be brought into being” and that “such economic science as we possess up to the present is limited almost exclusively to” the history of capitalist society 35 —draws the conclusion that “these words greatly narrow the field of operation of economic materialism”! What infinite naïveté, or what infinite conceit a man must have to count on such tricks passing unnoticed! First he misrepresents Marx, then pulls faces at his own pack of lies, then accurately cites precise ideas—and now has the insolence to declare that they narrow the field of operation of economic materialism! The kind and quality of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s twisting may be seen from the following example: “Marx nowhere substan-

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tiates them”—i.e., the foundations of the theory of economic materialism—says Mr. Mikhailovsky. “True, Marx and Engels thought of writing a work dealing with the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history, and even did write one (in 1845-1846), but it was never published. 36 Engels says: ‘The finished portion [of this work] consists of an exposition of the materialist conception of history which proves only how incomplete our knowledge of economic history still was at that time.’ Thus,” concludes Mr. Mikhailovsky, ”the fundamental points of ‘scientific socialism’ and of the theory of economic materialism were discovered, and were then expounded in the Manifesto, at a time when, as one of the authors himself admits, they were poorly equipped with the knowledge needed for such a work.” A charming way of criticising, is it not? Engels says that their knowledge of economic “history” was poor and that for this reason they did not publish their work of a “general” character on the history of philosophy. Mr. Mikhailovsky garbles this to make it mean that their knowledge was poor “for such a work” as the elaboration of “the fundamental points of scientific socialism,” that is, of a scientific criticism of the “bourgeois” system, already given in the Manifesto. One of two things: either Mr. Mikhailovsky cannot grasp the difference between an attempt to embrace the whole philosophy of history, and an attempt to explain the bourgeois regime scientifically, or he imagines that Marx and Engels possessed insufficient knowledge for a criticism of political economy. In that case, it is very cruel of him not to acquaint us with his views on this insufficiency, and with his amendments and additions. The decision by Marx and Engels not to publish their work on the history of philosophy and to concentrate all their efforts on a scientific analysis of one social organisation is only indicative of a very high degree of scientific conscientiousness. Mr. Mikhailovsky’s decision to twist this by the little addition that Marx and Engels expounded their views while themselves confessing that their knowledge was inadequate to elaborate them, is only indicative of methods of controversy which testify neither to intellect nor to a sense of decency. Here is another sample: “More was done by Marx’s alter ego, Engels, to substantiate economic materialism as a theory

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of history,” says Mr. Mikhailovsky. “He wrote a special historical work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in the Light of (im Anschluss) the Researches of Morgan. This ‘Anschluss’ is truly noteworthy. The book of the American Morgan appeared many years after Marx and Engels had announced the principles of economic materialism and entirely independently of it.” And then, says Mikhailovsky, “the economic materialists associated themselves” with this book; moreover, since there was no class struggle in prehistoric times, they introduced an “amendment” to the formula of the materialist conception of history indicating that, in addition to the production of material values, a determining factor is the production of man himself, i.e., procreation, which played a primary role in the primitive era, when the productivity of labour was still very undeveloped. Engels says that “Morgan’s great merit lies in having ... found in the groups based on ties of sex of the North American Indians the key to the most important, hitherto insoluble, riddles of the earliest Greek, Roman and German history.” 37 “And so,” quoth Mr. Mikhailovsky in this connection, “at the end of the forties an absolutely new, materialist and truly scientific conception of history was discovered and proclaimed, and it did for historical science what Darwin’s theory did for modern natural science.” But this conception—Mr. Mikhailovsky once more repeats—was never scientifically substantiated. “Not only was it never tested in a large and varied field of factual material” (Capital is “not the appropriate” work: it contains only facts and painstaking investigations!), “but was not even sufficiently motivated by at least a criticism and exclusion of other systems of the philosophy of history.” Engels’ book—Herrn E. Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft * —represents “only witty attempts made in passing,” and Mr. Mikhailovsky therefore considers it possible to ignore completely the mass of essential questions dealt with in that work, despite the fact that these “witty attempts” very wittily show the emptiness of sociologies which “start with utopias,” and despite the fact that this work contains a detailed criticism

* Herr

Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (Anti-Dühring).—Ed.

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of the “force theory,” which asserts that political and legal systems determine economic systems and is so zealously professed by the gentlemen who write in Russkoye Bogatstvo. Of course, it is much easier, is it not, to utter a few meaningless phrases about a work than to make a serious examination of even one of the problems materialistically solved in it. And it is also safe, for the censor will probably never pass a translation of that book, and Mr. Mikhailovsky may, with out fear for his subjective philosophy, call it a witty book. Even more characteristic and edifying (as an illustration to the saying that man was given a tongue to conceal his thoughts—or to lend vacuity the form of thought) are his comments on Marx’s Capital: “There are brilliant pages of history in Capital, but” (that wonderful “but”! It is not so much a “but,” as that famous “mais,” which translated into Russian means “the ears never grow higher than the forehead”) “by virtue of the very purpose of the book they are devoted to only one definite historical period, and not so much affirm the basic propositions of economic materialism as simply touch on the economic aspect of a certain group of historical phenomena.” In other words, Capital—which is devoted solely to a study of capitalist society—gives a materialist analysis of that society and its superstructures, “but” Mr. Mikhailovsky prefers to pass over this analysis. It deals, don’t you see, with only “one” period, whereas he, Mr. Mikhailovsky, wants to embrace all periods, and to embrace them in such a way as not to speak of any one of them in particular. Of course, there is only one way to achieve this aim—i.e., to embrace all periods without practically dealing with any one of them, and that is by uttering commonplaces and phrases, “brilliant” and empty. And nobody can compare with Mr. Mikhailovsky in the art of dismissing matters with phrases. It seems that it is not worth dealing (separately) with Marx’s investigations because he, Marx, “not so much affirms the basic propositions of economic materialism as simply touches on the economic aspect of a certain group of historical phenomena.” What profundity! “Does not affirm,” but “simply touches on”! How simple it really is to obscure any issue by phrase-mongering! For instance, when Marx repeatedly shows how civil equality, free contract and similar princi-

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ples of the law-governed state are based on relations among commodity producers—what is that? Does he thereby affirm materialism, or “simply” touch on it? With his characteristic modesty, our philosopher refrains from replying on the substance of the matter and directly draws conclusions from his “witty attempts” to talk brilliantly and say nothing. “No wonder,” the conclusion runs, “that forty years after the announcement of the theory which claimed to elucidate world history, ancient Greek, Roman and German history were still unsolved riddles for it; and the key to these riddles was provided, firstly, by a man who had absolutely no connection with the theory of economic materialism and knew nothing about it, and, secondly, with the help of a factor which was not economic. A rather amusing impression is produced by the term ‘production of man himself,’ i.e., procreation, which Engels seizes upon in order to preserve at least a verbal connection with the basic formula of economic materialism. He was, however, obliged to admit that for many ages the life of mankind did not proceed in accordance with this formula.” Your method of controversy is indeed a “wonder,” Mr. Mikhailovsky. The theory was that in order to “elucidate” history one must seek the foundations not in ideological, but in material social relations. Lack of factual material made it impossible to apply this method to an analysis of certain very important phenomena in ancient European history—for instance, that of gentile organisation 38 —which in consequence remained a riddle. * But then, the wealth of material collected by Morgan in America enabled him to analyse the nature of gentile organisation; and he came to the conclusion that its explanation must be sought not in ideological (e.g., legal or religious), but in material relations. Obviously, this fact is a brilliant confirmation of the materialist method, and nothing more. And when Mr. Mikhailovsky flings the reproach at this doctrine that, firstly, the key to very difficult

* Here, too, Mr. Mikhailovsky does not miss an opportunity of pulling faces: what, says he, do you mean—a scientific conception of history, yet ancient history remains a riddle! Mr. Mikhailovsky, take any textbook, and you will find that the problem of gentile organisation is one of the most difficult, and has evoked a host of theories in explanation of it.

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historical riddles was found by a man “who had absolutely no connection” with the theory of economic materialism, one can only wonder at the degree to which people can fail to distinguish what speaks in their favour from what severely trounces them. Secondly—argues our philosopher— procreation is not an economic factor. But where have you read in the works of Marx or Engels that they necessarily spoke of economic materialism? When they described their world outlook they called it simply materialism. Their basic idea (quite definitely expressed, for instance, in the passage from Marx quoted above) was that social relations are divided into material and ideological. The latter merely constitute a superstructure on the former, which take shape independent of the will and consciousness of man as (the result) the form of man’s activity to maintain his existence. The explanation of political and legal forms—Marx says in the passage quoted—must be sought in “the material conditions of life.” Mr. Mikhailovsky surely does not think that procreation relations are ideological? The explanation given by Mr. Mikhailovsky in this connection is so characteristic that it deserves to be dwelt on. “However much we exercise our ingenuity on the question of ‘procreation,’” says he, “and endeavour to establish at least a verbal connection between it and economic materialism, however much it may be interwoven in the complex web of phenomena of social life with other, including economic, phenomena, it has its own physiological and psychical roots.” (Are you telling babes and sucklings, Mr. Mikhailovsky, that procreation has physiological roots!? Who do you think you are fooling?) “And this reminds us that the theoreticians of economic materialism failed to settle accounts not only with history, but also with psychology. There can be no doubt that gentile ties have lost their significance in the history of civilised countries, but this can hardly be said with the same assurance of directly sexual and family ties. They have, of course, undergone considerable modification under the pressure of the increasing complexity of life in general, but with a certain amount of dialectical dexterity it might be shown that not only legal, but also economic relations themselves constitute a ‘superstructure’ on sexual and family relations. We shall not dwell on this, but nevertheless would at least

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point to the institution of inheritance.” At last our philosopher has been lucky enough to leave the sphere of empty phrase-mongering * and approach facts, definite facts, which can be verified and make it less easy to “fool” people about the essence of the matter. Let us then see how our critic of Marx shows that the institution of inheritance is a superstructure on sexual and family relations. “What is transmitted by inheritance,” argues Mr. Mikhailovsky, “is the products of economic production” (“the products of economic production”!! How literate! How sonorous! What elegant language!) “and the very institution of inheritance is to a certain degree determined by the fact of economic competition. But, firstly, non-material values are also transmitted by inheritance—as expressed in the concern to bring up children in the spirit of their fathers.” So the upbringing of children is part of the institution of inheritance! The Russian Civil Code, for example, contains a clause saying that “parents must endeavour by home upbringing to train their” (i.e., their children’s) “morals and to further the aims of government.” Is this what our philosopher calls the institution of inheritance?—“and, secondly, even confining ourselves solely to the economic sphere, if the institution of inheritance is inconceivable without the products of production, transmitted by inheritance, it is just as unthinkable without the products of ‘procreation,’ without them and without that complex and intense psychology which directly adheres to them.” (Do pay attention to the language: a complex psychology “adheres to” the products of procreation! That is really exquisite!) And so, the institution of inheritance is a superstructure on family and sexual relations, because inheritance is inconceivable without procreation! Why, this is a veritable discovery of America! Until now everybody believed that procreation can explain the institution of inheritance just as little as the necessity for taking food can explain the institution of

* By what other name, indeed, can one call the device by which the materialists are accused of not having settled accounts with history, without, however, an attempt being made to examine a single one of the numerous materialist explanations of various historical problems given by the materialists?—or by which the statement is made that we could prove it but we shall not bother about it?

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property. Until now everybody thought that if, for instance, in the era when the fief system 39 flourished in Russia, the land was not transmissible by inheritance (because it was regarded as conditional property only), the explanation was to be sought in the peculiarities of the social organisation of the time. Mr. Mikhailovsky presumably thinks that the explanation of the matter is simply that the psychology which adhered to the products of procreation of the fiefholder of that time was distinguished by insufficient complexity. Scratch the “friend of the people”—we may say, paraphrasing the familiar saying—and you will find a bourgeois. Really, what other meaning can attach to Mr. Mikhailovsky’s reflections on the connection between the institution of inheritance and the upbringing of children, the psychology of procreation, and so on, except that the institution of inheritance is just as eternal, essential and sacred as the upbringing of children? True, Mr. Mikhailovsky tried to leave himself a loophole by declaring that “the institution of inheritance is to a certain degree determined by the fact of economic competition,” but that is nothing but an attempt to avoid giving a definite answer to the question, and a futile attempt at that. How can we give this statement our consideration when we are not told a single word as to exactly what “certain degree” inheritance depends on competition, and when absolutely no explanation is given on what in fact gives rise to this connection between competition and the institution of inheritance? Actually, the institution of inheritance presumes the existence of private property, and the latter arises only with the appearance of exchange. Its basis is in the already incipient specialisation of social labour and the alienation of products on the market. So long, for instance, as all the members of the primitive American Indian community produced in common all the articles they required, private property was impossible. But when division of labour invaded the community and its members proceeded, individually, to engage in the production of some one article and to sell it on the market, this material isolation of the commodity producers found expression in the institution of private property. Both private property and inheritance are categories of a social order in which

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separate, small (monogamous) families have already been formed and exchange has begun to develop. Mr. Mikhailovsky’s example proves exactly the opposite of what he wanted to prove. Mr. Mikhailovsky gives another factual reference—and this too is a gem in its way! “As regards gentile ties,” he says, continuing to put materialism right, “they paled in the history of civilised peoples partly, it is true, under the rays of the influence of the forms of production” (another subterfuge, only more obvious still. Exactly what forms of production? An empty phrase!), “but partly they became dissolved in their own continuation and generalisation—in national ties.” And so, national ties are a continuation and generalisation of gentile ties! Mr. Mikhailovsky, evidently, borrows his ideas on the history of society from the tales taught to school children. The history of society—this copybook maxim runs—is that first there was the family, that nucleus of every society, * then—we are told—the family grew into the tribe, and the tribe grew into the state. If Mr. Mikhailovsky with a solemn air repeats this childish nonsense, it merely shows—apart from everything else— that he has not the slightest notion of the course taken even by Russian history. While one might speak of gentile life in ancient Rus, there can be no doubt that by the Middle Ages, the era of the Moscovite tsars, these gentile ties no longer existed, that is to say, the state was based on associations that were not gentile at all, but local: the landlords and the monasteries acquired peasants from various localities, and the communities thus formed were purely territorial associations. But one could hardly speak of national ties in the true sense of the term at that time: the state split into separate “lands,” sometimes even principalities, which preserved strong traces of the former autonomy, peculiarities of administration, at times their own troops (the local boyars went to war at the head of their own companies), their own tariff frontiers, and so forth. Only the modern period of

* This is a purely bourgeois idea: separate, small families came to predominate only under the bourgeois regime; they were entirely non-existent in prehistoric times. Nothing is more characteristic of the bourgeois than the application of the features of the modern system to all times and peoples.

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Russian history (approximately from the seventeenth century) is characterised by the actual amalgamation of all such regions, lands and principalities into one whole. This amalgamation, most esteemed Mr. Mikhailovsky, was brought about not by gentile ties, nor even by their continuation and generalisation: it was brought about by the increasing exchange among regions, the gradually growing circulation of commodities, and the concentration of the small local markets into a single, all-Russian market. Since the leaders and masters of this process were the merchant capitalists, the creation of these national ties was nothing else than the creation of bourgeois ties. By both his factual references Mr. Mikhailovsky has only belaboured himself and given us nothing but examples of bourgeois banality; “banality,” because he explained the institution of inheritance by procreation and its psychology, and nationality by gentile ties; “bourgeois,” because he took the categories and superstructures of one historically definite social formation (that based on exchange) for categories as general and eternal as the upbringing of children and “directly” sexual ties. What is highly characteristic here is that as soon as our subjective philosopher tried to pass from phrases to concrete facts he got himself into a mess. And apparently he feels very much at ease in this not over-clean position: there he sits, preening himself and splashing filth all around him. He wants, for instance, to refute the thesis that history is a succession of episodes of the class struggle, and so, declaring with an air of profundity that this is “extreme,” he says: “The International Working Men’s Association, 40 formed by Marx and organised for the purposes of the class struggle, did not prevent the French and German workers from cutting each other’s throats and despoiling each other”—something, he avers, which proves that materialism has not settled accounts “with the demon of national vanity and national hatred.” Such an assertion reveals the critic’s utter failure to understand that the very real interests of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie constitute the principal basis of this hatred, and that to talk of national sentiment as an independent factor is only to obscure the essence of the matter. Incidentally, we have already seen what a profound idea

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of nationality our philosopher has. Mr. Mikhailovsky cannot refer to the International except with the irony of a Burenin. 41 “Marx was the head of the International Working Men’s Association, which, it is true, has fallen to pieces, but is due to be resurrected.” Of course, if the nec plus ultra of international solidarity is to be seen in a system of “fair” exchange, on which the chronicler of home affairs expatiates with philistine banality in No. 2 of Russkoye Bogatstvo, and if it is not understood that exchange, fair or unfair, always presupposes and includes the rule of the bourgeoisie, and that the cessation of international clashes is impossible unless the economic organisation based on exchange is destroyed, then it is understandable that there should be nothing but sneers for the International. Then one can understand that Mr. Mikhailovsky cannot grasp the simple truth that there is no other way of combating national hatred than by organising and uniting the oppressed class for a struggle against the oppressor class in each separate country, than by uniting such national working-class organisations into a single international working-class army to fight international capital. As to the statement that the International did not prevent the workers from cutting each other’s throats, it is enough to remind Mr. Mikhailovsky of the events of the Commune, which showed the true attitude of the organised proletariat to the ruling classes engaged in war. What is particularly disgusting in all this polemic of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s is the methods he employs. If he is dissatisfied with the tactics of the International, if he does not share the ideas in the name of which the European workers are organising, let him at least criticise them bluntly and openly, and expound his idea of what would be more expedient tactics and more correct views. As it is, no definite and clear objections are made, and all we get is senseless jibes scattered here and there among a welter of phrase-mongering. What can one call this but filth, especially if we bear in mind that defence of the ideas and tactics of the International is not legally allowed in Russia? Such too are the methods Mr. Mikhailovsky employs when he argues against the Russian Marxists: without taking the trouble to formulate any of their theses conscientiously and accurately, so as to subject them to direct and definite criticism, he prefers to fasten

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on fragments of Marxist arguments he happens to have heard and to garble them. Judge for yourselves: “Marx was too intelligent and too learned to think that it was he who discovered the idea of the historical necessity and conformity to law of social phenomena.... The lower rungs” (of the Marxist ladder) * “do not know this” (that “the idea of historical necessity is not something new, invented or discovered by Marx, but a long established truth”), “or, at least, they have only a vague idea of the centuries of intellectual effort and energy spent on the establishment of this truth.” Of course, statements of this kind may very well make an impression on people who hear of Marxism for the first time, and in their case the aim of the critic may be easily achieved, namely, to garble, scoff and “conquer” (the word used, it is said, about Mr. Mikhailovsky’s articles by contributors to Russkoye Bogatstvo). Anybody who has any knowledge at all of Marx will immediately perceive the utter falsity and sham of such methods. One may not agree with Marx, but one cannot deny that he formulated with the utmost precision those of his views which constitute “something new” in relation to the earlier socialists. The something new consisted in the fact that the earlier socialists thought that to substantiate their views it was enough to show the oppression of the masses under the existing regime, to show the superiority of a system under which every man would receive what he himself had produced, to show that this ideal system harmonised with “human nature,” with the conception of a rational and moral life, and so forth. Marx found it impossible to content himself with such a socialism. He did not confine himself to describing the existing system, to judging it and condemning it; he gave a scientific explanation of it, reducing that existing system, which differs in * Regarding this meaningless term it should be stated that Mr. Mikhailovsky gives a special place to Marx (who is too intelligent and too learned for our critic to be able to criticise any of his propositions directly and openly), after whom he places Engels (“not such a creative mind”), next—more or less independent men like Kautsky—and then the other Marxists. Well, can such a classification have any serious value? If the critic is dissatisfied with the popularisers of Marx, what prevents him from correcting them on the basis of Marx? He does nothing of the kind. He evidently meant to be witty—but his wit fell flat.

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the different European and non-European countries, to a common basis—the capitalist social formation, the laws of the functioning and development of which he subjected to an objective analysis (he showed the necessity of exploitation under that system). In just the same way he did not find it possible to content himself with asserting that only the socialist system harmonises with human nature, as was claimed by the great utopian socialists and by their wretched imitators, the subjective sociologists. By this same objective analysis of the capitalist system, he proved the necessity of its transformation into the socialist system. (Exactly how he proved this and how Mr. Mikhailovsky objected to it is something we shall have to refer to again.) That is the source of those references to necessity which are frequently to be met with among Marxists. The distortion which Mr. Mikhailovsky introduced into the question is obvious: he omitted the whole factual content of the theory, its whole essence, and presented the matter as though the whole theory amounts to the one word “necessity” (“one cannot refer to this alone in complex practical affairs”), as though the proof of the theory is that this is what historical necessity demands. In other words, saying nothing about the content of the doctrine, he seized only on its label, and again started to pull faces at that which was “simply the worn-out coin,” he had worked so hard to transform into Marx’s teaching. We shall not, of course, try to follow up his clowning, because we are already sufficiently acquainted with that sort of thing. Let him cut capers for the amusement and satisfaction of Mr. Burenin (who not without good reason patted Mr. Mikhailovsky on the back in Novoye Vremya), 42 let him, after paying his respects to Marx, yelp at him from round the corner: “his controversy with the utopians and idealists is one-sided as it is,” i.e., as it is without the Marxists repeating its arguments. We cannot call such sallies anything else but yelping, because he does not adduce one single factual, definite and verifiable objection to this polemic, so that however willing we might be to discuss the subject, since we consider this controversy extremely important for the settlement of Russian socialist problems—we simply cannot reply to the yelping, and can only shrug our shoulders and say:

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Mighty must the pug-dog be, if at the elephant barketh he! 43 Not without interest is the next thing Mr. Mikhailovsky has to say about historical necessity, because it reveals, if only partly, the real ideological stock-in-trade of “our well-known sociologist” (the title enjoyed by Mr. Mikhailovsky, equally with Mr. V. V., among the liberal members of our “cultured society”). He speaks of “the conflict between the idea of historical necessity and the significance of individual activity”: socially active figures err in regarding themselves as active, when as a matter of fact they are “activated,” “marionettes, manipulated from a mysterious underground by the immanent laws of historical necessity”— such, he claims, is the conclusion to be drawn from this idea, which he therefore characterises as “sterile” and “diffuse.” Probably not every reader knows where Mr. Mikhailovsky got all this nonsense about marionettes and the like. The point is that this is one of the favourite hobby-horses of the subjective philosopher—the idea of the conflict between determinism and morality, between historical necessity and the significance of the individual. He has filled reams of paper on the subject and has uttered an infinite amount of sentimental, philistine nonsense in order to settle this conflict in favour of morality and the role of the individual. Actually, there is no conflict here at all; it has been invented by Mr. Mikhailovsky, who feared (not without reason) that determinism would cut the ground from under the philistine morality he loves so dearly. The idea of determinism, which postulates that human acts are necessitated and rejects the absurd tale about free will, in no way destroys man’s reason or conscience, or appraisal of his actions. Quite the contrary, only the determinist view makes a strict and correct appraisal possible instead of attributing everything you please to free will. Similarly, the idea of historical necessity does not in the least undermine the role of the individual in history: all history is made up of the actions of individuals, who are undoubtedly active figures. The real question that arises in appraising the social activity of an individual is: what conditions ensure the success of his actions, what guarantee is there that these actions will not remain an isolated act lost in a welter of contrary acts? This also is

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a question answered differently by Social-Democrats and by the other Russian socialists: how must actions aimed at bringing about the socialist system attract the masses in order to yield serious fruits? Obviously, the answer to this question depends directly and immediately on the way in which the grouping of social forces in Russia and the class struggle which forms the substance of Russian reality are understood; and here too Mr. Mikhailovsky merely wanders all round the question, without even attempting to formulate it precisely and furnish an answer. The Social-Democratic answer to the question is based, as we know, on the view that the Russian economic system constitutes a bourgeois society, from which there can be only one way out, the one that necessarily follows from the very nature of the bourgeois system, namely, the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Obviously, criticism that is serious should be directed either against the view that ours is a bourgeois system, or against the conception of the nature of this system and the laws of its development; but Mr. Mikhailovsky does not even dream of dealing with serious questions. He prefers to dispose of matters with vapid phrasemongering about necessity being too general a bracket and so on. But then, Mr. Mikhailovsky, any idea will be too general a bracket if you treat it like an egg from which you throw out the meat and then begin playing with the shell! This outer shell, which hides the really serious and burning questions of the day, is Mr. Mikhailovsky’s favourite sphere, and with particular pride he stresses the point, for example, that “economic materialism ignores or throws a wrong light on the question of heroes and the crowd.” Pray note—the question which are the conflicting classes that make up contemporary Russian reality and what is its basis, is probably too general for Mr. Mikhailovsky, and he evades it. On the other hand, the question of what relations exist between the hero and the crowd—whether it is a crowd of workers, peasants, factory owners, or landlords, is one that interests him extremely. Maybe these questions are “interesting,” but to rebuke the materialists for devoting all their efforts to the settlement of problems that directly concern the liberation of the labouring class is to be an admirer of philistine science, nothing more. Concluding his “criticism” (?) of ma-

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terialism, Mr. Mikhailovsky makes one more attempt to misrepresent the facts and performs one more manipulation. Having expressed doubt about the correctness of Engels’ opinion that Capital was hushed up by the official economists44 (a doubt he justifies on the curious grounds that there are numerous universities in Germany!), Mr. Mikhailovsky says: “Marx did not have this particular circle of readers” (workers) “in view, but expected something from men of science too.” That is absolutely untrue. Marx understood very well how little impartiality and scientific criticism he could expect from the bourgeois scientists and in the Afterword to the second edition of Capital he expressed himself very definitely on this score. There he says: “The appreciation which Das Kapital rapidly gained in wide circles of the German working class is the best reward of my labours. Herr Mayer ... who in economic matters represents the bourgeois point of view, in a pamphlet published during the Franco-German War, aptly expounded the idea that the great capacity for theory (der grosse theoretische Sinn), which used to be considered a hereditary German possession, had almost completely disappeared amongst the so-called educated classes in Germany, but that amongst its working class, on the contrary, that capacity was celebrating its revival.” 45 The manipulation again concerns materialism and is entirely in the style of the first sample. “The theory (of materialism) has never been scientifically substantiated and verified.” Such is the thesis. The proof: “Individual good pages of historical content in the works of Engels, Kautsky and some others also (as in the esteemed work of Blos) might well dispense with the label of economic materialism, since” (note the “since”!), “in fact” (sic!), “they take the sum-total of social life into account, even though the economic note predominates in the chord.” And the conclusion—“Economic materialism has not justified itself in science.” A familiar trick! To prove that the theory lacks foundation, Mr. Mikhailovsky first distorts it by ascribing to it the absurd intention of not taking the sum-total of social life into account, whereas quite the opposite is the case: the materialists (Marxists) were the first socialists to raise the issue of the need to analyse all aspects of social life,

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and not only the economic * —then he declares that “in fact” the materialists have “effectively” explained the sum-total of social life by economics (a fact which obviously demolishes the author)—and finally he draws the conclusion that materialism “has not justified itself.” Your manipulations, however, Mr. Mikhailovsky, have justified themselves magnificently! This is all that Mr. Mikhailovsky advances in “refutation” of materialism. I repeat, there is no criticism here, it is nothing but empty and pretentious babbling. If we were to ask anybody at all what objections Mr. Mikhailovsky has raised against the view that production relations form the basis of all others; how he has refuted the correctness of the concept of the social formation and of the natural-historical development of these formations elaborated by Marx using the materialist method; how he has proved the fallacy of the materialist explanations of various historical problems given, for instance, by the writers he has mentioned—the answer would have to be that Mr. Mikhailovsky has raised no objections, has advanced no refutation, indicated no fallacies. He has merely beaten about the bush, trying to cover up the essence of the matter with phrases, and in passing has invented various paltry subterfuges.

* This has been quite clearly expressed in Capital and in the tactics of the Social-Democrats, as compared with the earlier socialists. Marx directly demanded that matters must not be confined to the economic aspect. In 1843, when drafting the programme for a projected magazine, 46 Marx wrote to Ruge: “The whole socialist principle is again only one aspect.... We, on our part, must devote equal attention to the other aspect, the theoretical existence of man, and consequently must make religion, science, and so forth an object of our criticism.... Just as religion represents the table of contents of the theoretical conflicts of mankind, the political state represents the table of contents of man’s practical conflicts. Thus, the political state, within the limits of its form expresses sub specie rei publicae (from the political standpoint) all social conflicts, needs and interests. Hence to make a most special political question—e.g., the difference between the social-estate system and the representative system— an object of criticism by no means implies descending from the hauteur des principes (the height of principles.—Ed.) since this question expresses in political language the difference between the rule of man and the rule of private property. This means that the critic not only may but must deal with these political questions (which the inveterate socialist considers unworthy of attention).’’

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We can hardly expect anything serious of such a critic when he continues in No. 2 of Russkoye Bogatstvo to refute Marxism. The only difference is that his inventiveness in the sphere of manipulations is already exhausted and he is beginning to use other people’s. He starts out by holding forth on the ‘’complexity’’ of social life: why, he says, even galvanism is connected with economic materialism, because Galvani’s experiments “produced an impression” on Hegel, too. Wonderful wit! One could just as easily connect Mr. Mikhailovsky with the Emperor of China! What follows from this, except that there are people who find pleasure in talking nonsense?! “The essence of the historical process,” Mr. Mikhailovsky continues, “which is elusive in general, has also eluded the doctrine of economic materialism, although this apparently rests on two pillars: the discovery of the alldetermining significance of the forms of production and exchange and the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process.” And so, the materialists rest their case on the “incontrovertibility” of the dialectical process! In other words, they base their sociological theories on Hegelian triads. 47 Here we have the stock method of accusing Marxism of Hegelian dialectics, an accusation that might be thought to have been worn threadbare enough by Marx’s bourgeois critics. Unable to advance any fundamental argument against the doctrine, these gentlemen fastened on Marx’s manner of expression and attacked the origin of the theory, thinking thereby to undermine its essence. And Mr. Mikhailovsky makes no bones about resorting to such methods. He uses a chapter from Engels’ Anti-Dühring 48 as a pretext. Replying to Dühring, who had attacked Marx’s dialectics, Engels says that Marx never dreamed of “proving” anything by means of Hegelian triads, that Marx only studied and investigated the real process, and that the sole criterion of theory recognised by him was its conformity to reality. If, however, it sometimes happened that the development of some particular social phenomenon fitted in with the Hegelian scheme, namely, thesis—negation—negation of the negation, there is nothing surprising about that, for it is no rare thing in nature at all. And Engels proceeds to cite examples from

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natural history (the development of a seed) and the social sphere—as, for instance, that first there was primitive communism, then private property, and then the capitalist socialisation of labour; or that first there was primitive materialism, then idealism, and then scientific materialism, and so forth. It is clear to everybody that the main weight of Engels’ argument is that materialists must correctly and accurately depict the actual historical process, and that insistence on dialectics, the selection of examples to demonstrate the correctness of the triad, is nothing but a relic of the Hegelianism out of which scientific socialism has grown, a relic of its manner of expression. And, indeed, once it has been categorically declared that to “prove” anything by triads is absurd, and that nobody even thought of doing so, what significance can attach to examples of “dialectical” processes? Is it not obvious that this merely points to the origin of the doctrine and nothing more? Mr. Mikhailovsky himself sees it when he says that the theory should not be blamed for its origin. But in order to discern in Engels’ arguments something more than the origin of the theory, proof should obviously be offered that the materialists have settled at least one historical problem by means of triads, and not on the strength of the pertinent facts. Did Mr. Mikhailovsky attempt to prove this? Not a bit of it. On the contrary, he was himself obliged to admit that “Marx filled the empty dialectical scheme so full with factual content that it can be removed from this content like a lid from a bowl without changing anything” (as to the exception which Mr. Mikhailovsky makes here— regarding the future—we shall deal with it anon). If that is so, why is Mr. Mikhailovsky making so much fuss about this lid that changes nothing? Why does he say that the materialists “rest” their case on the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process? Why, when he is combating this lid, does he declare that he is combating one of the “pillars” of scientific socialism, which is a downright untruth? It goes without saying that I shall not examine how Mr. Mikhailovsky analyses the examples of triads, because, I repeat, this has no connection whatever either with scientific materialism or with Russian Marxism. But there is one interesting question: what grounds had Mr. Mikhailovsky for so distorting the attitude of Marxists to dialectics?

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Two grounds: firstly, Mr. Mikhailovsky, as the saying goes, heard the tolling of a bell, but whence it came he could not tell; secondly, Mr. Mikhailovsky performed (or, rather, borrowed from Dühring) one more piece of subterfuge. Ad 1) * When reading Marxist literature, Mr. Mikhailovsky constantly came across references to the “dialectical method” in social science, “dialectical thinking,” again in the sphere of social problems (which alone is in question), and so forth. In his simplicity of heart (it were well if it were only simplicity) he took it for granted that this method consists in solving all sociological problems in accordance with the laws of the Hegelian triad. Had he been just a little more attentive to the matter in hand he could not but have become convinced of the absurdity of this notion. What Marx and Engels called the dialectical method—as against the metaphysical—is nothing else than the scientific method in sociology, which consists in regarding society as a living organism in a state of constant development (and not as something mechanically concatenated and therefore permitting all sorts of arbitrary combinations of separate social elements), an organism the study of which requires an objective analysis of the production relations that constitute the given social formation and an investigation of its laws of functioning and development. We shall endeavour below to illustrate the relation between the dialectical method and the metaphysical (to which concept the subjective method in sociology undoubtedly also belongs) by Mr. Mikhailovsky’s own arguments. For the present we shall only observe that anyone who reads the definition and description of the dialectical method given either by Engels (in the polemic against Dühring: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific) or by Marx (various comments in Capital, in the Afterword to the second edition, and in The Poverty of Philosophy) 49 will see that the Hegelian triads are not even mentioned, and that it all amounts to regarding social evolution as the natural historical process of development of socialeconomic formations. In confirmation of this I shall cite in extenso the description of the dialectical method given in Vestnik Yevropy, 1872, No. 5 (in the article “The Standpoint

* As

to the first point.—Ed.

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of Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy”), 50 which Marx quotes in the Afterword to the second edition of Capital. Marx says that the method he employed in Capital had been poorly understood. “German reviews, of course, shriek out at ‘Hegelian sophistics’.” And in order to illustrate his method more clearly, Marx quotes the description of it given in the article mentioned. The one thing of importance to Marx, it is there stated, is to find the law governing the phenomena he is investigating, and of particular importance to him is the law of change, the development of those phenomena, of their transition from one form into another, from one order of social relations to another. Consequently, Marx is concerned with one thing only: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of the given order of social relations, and to establish, as fully as possible, the facts that serve him as fundamental points of departure. For this purpose it is quite enough if, while proving the necessity of the present order of things, he at the same time proves the necessity of another order which must inevitably grow out of the preceding one regardless of whether men believe in it or not, whether they are conscious of it or not. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intentions, but, rather, on the contrary, determining the will, consciousness and intentions of men. (This for the information of the subjectivist gentlemen, who separate social evolution from the evolution of natural history merely because man sets himself conscious “aims” and is guided by definite ideals.) If the conscious element plays so subordinate a part in the history of civilisation, it is selfevident that a critique whose subject is civilisation, can least of all take as its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the external, objective phenomenon alone can serve as its point of departure. Criticism must consist in comparing and contrasting the given fact with another fact and not with the idea; the one thing of moment is that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, in respect of each other, different moments of development; but most important of all is that an equally accurate investigation be made of the whole series of known states,

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their sequence and the relation between the different stages of development. Marx rejects the very idea that the laws of economic life are one and the same for the past and the present. On the contrary, every historical period has its own laws. Economic life constitutes a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. Earlier economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Setting himself the task of investigating the capitalist economic organism from this point of view, Marx thereby formulates, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in disclosing the special (historical) laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, and death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher organism. Such is the description of the dialectical method which Marx fished out of the mass of magazine and newspaper comments on Capital, and which he translated into German, because this description of the method, as he himself says, is absolutely correct. The question arises, is so much as even a single word said here about triads, trichotomies, the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process and suchlike nonsense, which Mr. Mikhailovsky battles against so valiantly? Following this description, Marx says plainly that his method is the “direct opposite” of Hegel’s method. According to Hegel the development of the idea, in conformity with the dialectical laws of the triad, determines the development of the real world. And it is only in that case, of course, that one can speak of the importance of the triads, of the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process. “With me, on the contrary,” says Marx, “the ideal is nothing but the reflection of the material.” And the whole matter thus amounts to an “affirmative recognition of the existing state of things and of its inevitable development”; no other role is left for the triads than that of the lid and the shell (“I coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to Hegel,” Marx says in this same Afterword), in which only philistines could be interested. How, then, we may ask, should

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we judge a man who set out to criticise one of the “pillars” of scientific materialism, i.e., dialectics, and began to talk about all sorts of things, even about frogs and Napoleon, but not about what dialectics is, whether the development of society is really a process of natural history, whether the materialist concept of social-economic formations as special social organisms is correct, whether the methods of objective analysis of these formations are right, whether social ideas really do not determine social development but are themselves determined by it, and so forth? Can one assume only a lack of understanding in this case? Ad 2) * After this “criticism” of dialectics, Mr. Mikhailovsky imputes these methods of proving things “by means of” Hegelian triads to Marx, and, of course, victoriously combats them. “Regarding the future,” he says, “the immanent laws of society are based purely on dialectics.” (This is the exception referred to above.) Marx’s arguments on the inevitability of the expropriation of the expropriators by virtue of the laws of development of capitalism are “purely dialectical.” Marx’s “ideal” of the common ownership of land and capital “in the sense of its inevitability and indubitability rests entirely at the end of the Hegelian threeterm chain.” This argument is taken in its entirety from Dühring, who expounds it in his “Kritische Geschichte der Nationaloekonomie und des Sozialismus” (3-te Aufl., 1879. S. 48687). ** But Mr. Mikhailovsky says not a word about Dühring. Perhaps, incidentally, he arrived independently at this way of garbling Marx? Engels gave a splendid reply to Dühring, and since he also quotes Dühring’s criticism we shall confine ourselves to Engels’ reply. 51 The reader will see that it fully applies to Mr. Mikhailovsky. “‘This historical sketch’ (of the genesis of the so-called primitive accumulation of capital in England) ‘is relatively the best part of Marx’s book,’” says Dühring, “‘and would be even better if it had not relied on the dialectical crutch to

* As to the second point.—Ed. ** A Critical History of National

edition, 1879, pp. 486-87).—Ed.

Economy and Socialism (3rd

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help out its scholarly crutch. The Hegelian negation of the negation, in default of anything better and clearer, has in fact to serve here as the midwife to deliver the future from the womb of the past. The abolition of “individual property,” which since the sixteenth century has been effected in the way indicated above, is the first negation. It will be followed by a second, which bears the character of a negation of the negation, and hence of a restoration of “individual property,” but in a higher form, based on common ownership of land and of the instruments of labour. Herr Marx calls this new “individual property” also “social property,” and in this there appears the Hegelian higher unity, in which the contradiction is supposed to be sublated’” (aufgehoben—a specific Hegelian term), “‘that is to say, in the Hegelian verbal jugglery, both overcome and preserved.... “‘According to this, the expropriation of the expropriators is, as it were, the automatic result of historical reality in its materially external relations.... It would be difficult to convince a sensible man of the necessity of the common ownership of land and capital, on the basis of credence in Hegelian word-juggling such as the negation of the negation.... The nebulous hybrids of Marx’s conceptions will not, however, appear strange to anyone who realises what nonsense can be concocted with Hegelian dialectics as the scientific basis, or rather what nonsense must necessarily spring from it. For the benefit of the reader who is not familiar with these artifices, it must be pointed out expressly that Hegel’s first negation is the catechismal idea of the fall from grace, and his second is that of a higher unity leading to redemption. The logic of facts can hardly be based on this nonsensical analogy borrowed from the religious sphere.... Herr Marx remains cheerfully in the nebulous world of his property which is at once both individual and social and leaves it to his adepts to solve for themselves this profound dialectical enigma.’ Thus far Herr Dühring. “So,” Engels concludes, “Marx has no other way of proving the necessity of the social revolution, of establishing the common ownership of land and of the means of production produced by labour, except by using the Hegelian negation of the negation; and because he bases his socialist theory on these nonsensical analogies borrowed from religion, he arrives at

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the result that in the society of the future there will be dominant an ownership at once both individual and social, as the Hegelian higher unity of the sublated contradiction. * “But let the negation of the negation rest for the moment, and let us have a look at the ‘ownership’ which is ‘at once both individual and social.’ Herr Dühring characterises this as a ‘nebulous world,’ and curiously enough he is really right on this point. Unfortunately, however, it is not Marx but again Herr Dühring himself who is in this ‘nebulous world.’... He can put Marx right à la Hegel, by imputing to him the higher unity of a property, of which there is not a word in Marx. “Marx says: ‘It is the negation of the negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era; i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production. The transformation of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised property.’ That is all. The state of things brought about through the expropriation of the expropriators is therefore characterised as the re-

* That this formulation of Dühring’s views applies fully to Mr. Mikhailovsky is proved by the following passage in his article “Karl Marx Being Tried by Y. Zhukovsky.” Objecting to Mr. Zhukovsky’s assertion that Marx is a defender of private property, Mr. Mikhailovsky refers to this scheme of Marx’s and explains it in the following manner. “In his scheme Marx employed two well-known tricks of Hegelian dialectics: firstly, the scheme is constructed according to the laws of the Hegelian triad; secondly, the synthesis is based on the identity of opposites—individual and social property. This means that the word ‘individual’ here has the specific, purely conditional meaning of a term of the dialectical process, and absolutely nothing can be based on it.” This was said by a man possessed of the most estimable intentions, defending, in the eyes of the Russian public, the “sanguine” Marx from the bourgeois Mr. Zhukovsky. And with these estimable intentions he explains Marx as basing his conception of the process on “tricks”! Mr. Mikhailovsky may draw from this what is for him the not unprofitable moral that, whatever the matter in hand, estimable intentions alone are rather inadequate.

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establishment of individual property, but on the basis of the social ownership of the land and of the means of production produced by labour itself. To anyone who understands German” (and Russian too, Mr. Mikhailovsky, because the translation is absolutely correct) “this means that social ownership extends to the land and the other means of production, and individual ownership to the products, that is, the articles of consumption. And in order to make the matter comprehensible even to children of six, Marx assumes on page 56” (Russ. ed., p. 30). 52 “‘a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community,’ that is, a society organised on a socialist basis; and he continues: ‘The total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh means of production and remains social.’ But another portion is consumed by the members as means of subsistence. ‘A distribution of this portion among them is consequently necessary.’ And surely that is clear enough even for Herr Dühring.... “The property which is at once both individual and social, this confusing hybrid, this nonsense which necessarily springs from Hegelian dialectics, this nebulous world, this profound dialectical enigma, which Marx leaves his adepts to solve for themselves—is yet another free creation and imagination on the part of Herr Dühring.... “But what role,” Engels continues, “does the negation of the negation play in Marx? On page 791 and the following pages” (Russ. ed., p. 648 et seq.) 53 “he sets out the final conclusions which he draws from the preceding 50” (Russ. ed., 35) “pages of economic and historical investigation into the so-called primitive accumulation of capital. Before the capitalist era, petty industry existed, at least in England, on the basis of the private property of the labourer in his means of production. The so-called primitive accumulation of capital consisted there in the expropriation of these immediate producers, that is, in the dissolution of private property based on the labour of its owner. This became possible because the petty industry referred to above is compatible only with narrow and primi-

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tive bounds of production and society and at a certain stage brings forth the material agencies for its own annihilation. This annihilation, the transformation of the individual and scattered means of production into socially concentrated ones, forms the prehistory of capital. As soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of production” (into capital), “and therefore the further expropriation of private proprietors, takes a new form. ‘That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the concentration of capital. One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this concentration, or this expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the co-operative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil; the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialised labour. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. Capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Concentration of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.’ “And now I ask the reader: where are the dialectical frills and mazes and conceptual arabesques; where the mixed

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and misconceived ideas according to which everything is all one and the same thing in the end; where the dialectical miracles for his faithful followers; where the mysterious dialectical rubbish and the maze in accordance with the Hegelian Logos doctrine, without which Marx, according to Herr Dühring, is unable to put his exposition into shape? Marx merely shows from history, and here states in a summarised form, that just as formerly petty industry by its very development, necessarily created the conditions of its own annihilation ... so now the capitalist mode of production has likewise itself created the material conditions from which it must perish. The process is a historical one, and if it is at the same time a dialectical process, this is not Marx’s fault, however annoying it may be to Herr Dühring. “It is only at this point, after Marx has completed his proof on the basis of historical and economic facts, that he proceeds: ‘The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of the negation’—and so on (as quoted above). “Thus, by characterising the process as the negation of the negation, Marx does not intend to prove that the process was historically necessary. On the contrary: only after he has proved from history that in fact the process has partially already occurred, and partially must occur in the future, he in addition characterises it as a process which develops in accordance with a definite dialectical law That is all. It is therefore once again a pure distortion of the facts by Herr Dühring when he declares that the negation of the negation has to serve here as the midwife to deliver the future from the womb of the past, or that Marx wants anyone to be convinced of the necessity of the common ownership of land and capital ... on the basis of credence in the negation of the negation” (p. 125). The reader will see that Engels’ splendid rebuttal of Dühring applies in its entirety to Mr. Mikhailovsky, who also asserts that with Marx the future rests exclusively

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at the end of the Hegelian chain and that the conviction of its inevitability can be founded only on faith. * The whole difference between Dühring and Mr. Mikhailovsky reduces itself to the following two small points: firstly, Dühring, despite the fact that he could not speak of Marx without foaming at the mouth, nevertheless considered it necessary to mention in the next section of his History that Marx in the Afterword 54 categorically repudiated the accusation of Hegelianism. Mr. Mikhailovsky, however, has nothing to say about the (above quoted) absolutely definite and clear statements by Marx on what he conceives the dialectical method to be. Secondly, another peculiarity of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s is that he concentrated all his attention on the use of tenses. Why, when he speaks of the future, does Marx use the present tense?—our philosopher demands with an air of triumph. You may find the answer to this in any grammar, most worthy critic: you will find that the present tense is used instead of the future when the future is regarded as inevitable and undoubted. But why so, why is it undoubted?— Mr. Mikhailovsky anxiously asks, desiring to convey such profound agitation as would justify even a distortion. But on this point, too, Marx gave an absolutely definite reply. You may consider it inadequate or wrong, but in that case you must show how exactly and why exactly it is wrong, and not talk nonsense about Hegelianism. Time was when Mr. Mikhailovsky not only knew himself what this reply was, but lectured others on it. Mr. Zhukovsky, he wrote in 1877, had good grounds for regarding Marx’s conception of the future as conjectural, but he “had no moral right” to ignore the question of the socialisation of labour, “to which Marx attributes vast * It is worth while, I think, to note in this connection that the entire explanation given by Engels is contained in the same chapter in which he discusses the seed, the teaching of Rousseau, and other examples of the dialectical process. It would seem that the absurdity of accusing Marxism of Hegelian dialectics would have been made quite evident by merely comparing these examples with the clear and categorical statements by Engels (and by Marx, to whom the manuscript was read before printing), and there can be no question of trying to prove anything by triads or of inserting in the depiction of the real process the “conditional members” of these triads.

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importance.” Well, of course! Zhukovsky in 1877 had no moral right to evade the question, but Mr. Mikhailovsky in 1894 has this moral right! Perhaps, quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi?! * I cannot help recalling here a strange notion of this socialisation once expressed in Otechestvenniye Zapiski. 55 In No. 7, 1883, this magazine published “A Letter to the Editor,” from a certain Mr. Postoronny 56 who, like Mr. Mikhailovsky, regarded Marx’s “conception” about the future as conjectural. “Essentially,” this gentleman argues, “the social form of labour under capitalism amounts to this, that several hundreds or thousands of workers grind, hammer, turn, place on, place under, pull and perform numerous other operations under one roof. As to the general character of this regime it is excellently expressed by the saying: ‘Every man for himself, and God for all.’ Where does the social form of labour come in?” Well, you can see at once that the man has grasped what it is all about! “The social form of labour” “amounts” to “working under one roof”!! And when such preposterous ideas are expressed in one of the, so far, best Russian magazines, they still want to assure us that the theoretical part of Capital is generally recognised by science. Yes, as it was unable to raise the slightest serious objection to Capital, “generally recognised science” began to bow and scrape to it, at the same time continuing to betray the most elementary ignorance and to repeat the old banalities of school economics. We must dwell on this question somewhat in order to show Mr. Mikhailovsky what is the essence of the matter which he, by force of habit, has passed over entirely. The socialisation of labour by capitalist production does not at all consist in people working under one roof (that is only a small part of the process), but in the concentration of capital being accompanied by the specialisation of social labour, by a decrease in the number of capitalists in each given branch of industry and an increase in the number of separate branches of industry—in many * What Jove may do, the bull may not.—Ed.

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separate production processes being merged into one social production process. When, in the days of handicraft weaving, for example, the small producers themselves spun the yarn and made it into cloth, we had a few branches of industry (spinning and weaving were merged). But when production becomes socialised by capitalism, the number of separate branches of industry increases: cotton spinning is done separately and so is weaving; this very division and the concentration of production give rise to new branches—machine building, coal mining, and so forth. In each branch of industry, which has now become more specialised, the number of capitalists steadily decreases. This means that the social tie between the producers becomes increasingly stronger, the producers become welded into a single whole. The isolated small producers each performed several operations simultaneously, and were therefore relatively independent of each other: when, for instance, the handicraftsman himself sowed flax, and himself spun and wove, he was almost independent of others. It was this (and only this) regime of small, dispersed commodity producers that justified the saying: “Every man for himself, and God for all,” that is, an anarchy of market fluctuations. The case is entirely different under the socialisation of labour that has been achieved due to capitalism. The manufacturer who produces fabrics depends on the cotton-yarn manufacturer; the latter depends on the capitalist planter who grows the cotton, on the owner of the engineering works, the coal mine, and so on and so forth. The result is that no capitalist can get along without others. It is clear that the saying “every man for himself” is quite inapplicable to such a regime: here each works for all and all for each (and no room is left for God—either as a supermundane fantasy or as a mundane “golden calf”). The character of the regime changes completely. When, during the regime of small, isolated enterprises, work came to a standstill in any one of them, this affected only a few members of society, it did not cause any general confusion, and therefore did not attract general attention and did not provoke public interference. But when work comes to a standstill in a large enterprise, one engaged in a highly specialised branch of industry and therefore working almost for the whole of

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society and, in its turn, dependent on the whole of society (for the sake of simplicity I take a case where socialisation has reached the culminating point), work is bound to come to a standstill in all the other enterprises of society, because they can only obtain the products they need from this enterprise, they can only dispose of all their own commodities if its commodities are available. All production processes thus merge into a single social production process; yet each branch is conducted by a separate capitalist, it depends on him and the social products are his private property. Is it not clear that the form of production comes into irreconcilable contradiction with the form of appropriation? Is it not evident that the latter must adapt itself to the former and must become social, that is, socialist? But the smart philistine of Otechestvenniye Zapiski reduces the whole thing to work under one roof. Could anything be wider of the mark! (I have described only the material process, only the change in production relations, without touching on the social aspect of the process, the fact that the workers become united, welded together and organised, since that is a derivative and secondary phenomenon.) The reason such elementary things have to be explained to the Russian “democrats” is that they are so badly stuck in the mud of petty-bourgeois ideas that to imagine any but a petty-bourgeois order of things is quite beyond them. Let us return, however, to Mr. Mikhailovsky. What objections did he make to the facts and arguments on which Marx based the conclusion that the socialist system is inevitable by virtue of the very laws of capitalist development? Did he show that in reality, under a commodity organisation of social economy, there is no growing specialisation of the social labour process, no concentration of capital and enterprises, no socialisation of the whole labour process? No, he did not advance a single argument in refutation of these facts. Did he shake the proposition that anarchy, which is irreconcilable with the socialisation of labour, is an inherent feature of capitalist society? He said nothing about this. Did he prove that the amalgamation of the labour processes of all the capitalists into a single social labour process is compatible with private property, or that some solution to the contradiction is possible

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and conceivable other than that indicated by Marx? No, he did not say a word about this. On what, then, does his criticism rest? On manipulations, distortion, and on a spate of words which are nothing more than the noise of a rattle. How else, indeed, are we to characterise methods employed by the critic who, after first talking a lot of nonsense about triple successive steps of history, demands of Marx with a serious air: “And what next?”—that is, how will history proceed beyond that final stage of the process he has described? Please note that from the very outset of his literary and revolutionary activities Marx most definitely demanded that sociological theory should accurately depict the real process—and nothing more (cf., for instance, the Communist Manifesto on the communists’ criterion of theory). 57 He strictly adhered to this demand in his Capital: he made it his task to give a scientific analysis of the capitalist form of society—and there he stopped, after showing that the development of this organisation actually going on before our eyes has such and such a tendency, that it must inevitably perish and turn into another, a higher organisation. But Mr. Mikhailovsky, evading the whole substance of Marx’s doctrine, puts his stupid question: “And what next?” And he adds profoundly: “I must frankly confess that I am not quite clear what Engels’ reply would be.” We, however, on our part must frankly confess, Mr. Mikhailovsky, that we are quite clear about what the spirit and methods of such “criticism” are! Or take the following argument: “In the Middle Ages, Marx’s individual property based on the proprietor’s own labour was neither the only nor the predominating factor, even in the realm of economic relations. There was much more besides, but the dialectical method in Marx’s interpretation” (and not in Mr. Mikhailovsky’s garbled version of it?) “does not propose returning to it.... It is obvious that all these schemes do not present a picture of historical reality, or even of its proportions; they simply satisfy the tendency of the human mind to think of every object in its past, present and future states.” Even your way of distorting things, Mr. Mikhailovsky, is monotonous to the point of nausea! Into Marx’s scheme, which claims to formulate nothing

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but the actual process of development of capitalism, * he first insinuates the intention of proving everything by triads, then declares that Marx’s scheme does not conform to the plan foisted on it by Mr. Mikhailovsky (the third stage restores only one aspect of the first stage, omitting all the others), and then in the most blatant manner draws the conclusion that “the scheme obviously does not present a picture of historical reality”! Is any serious polemic thinkable with a man who (as Engels said of Dühring) cannot quote accurately, even by way of exception? Can there be any arguing, when the public is assured that the scheme “obviously” does not conform to reality, without even an attempt being made to show its faultiness in any respect? Instead of criticising the real content of Marxist views, Mr. Mikhailovsky exercises his ingenuity on the subject of the categories past, present and future. Engels, for instance, arguing against the “eternal truths” of Herr Dühring, says that the “morality ... preached to us today” is a threefold morality: Christian-feudal, bourgeois and proletarian, so that the past, present and future have their own theories of morality. 58 In this connection, Mr. Mikhailovsky reasons as follows: “I think that it is the categories past, present and future that lie at the basis of all triple divisions of history into periods.” What profundity! Who does not know that if any social phenomenon is examined in its process of development, relics of the past, foundations of the present and germs of the future will always be discovered in it? But did Engels, for instance, think of asserting that the history of morality (he was speaking, we know, only of the “present”) was confined to the three factors indicated, that feudal morality, for example, was not preceded by slave morality, and the latter by the morality of the primitive-communist community? Instead of seriously criticising Engels’ attempt to elucidate modern trends in

* The other features of the economic system of the Middle Ages are omitted because they belonged to the feudal social formation whereas Marx investigates only the capitalist formation. In its pure form the process of capitalist development actually began—in England, for instance—with the system of small, isolated commodity producers and their individual labour property.

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moral ideas by explaining them materialistically, Mr. Mikhailovsky treats us to the most empty phrase-mongering! In respect of such methods of “criticism” employed by Mr. Mikhailovsky, criticism which begins with the statement that he does not know where, in what work, the materialist conception of history is expounded, it would perhaps be worth while to recall that there was a time when the author knew one of these works and was able to appraise it more correctly. In 1877, Mr. Mikhailovsky expressed the following opinion of Capital: “If we remove from Capital the heavy, clumsy and unnecessary lid of Hegelian dialectics” (How strange! How is it that “Hegelian dialectics” were “unnecessary” in 1877, while in 1894 it appears that materialism rests on “the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process”?), “then, apart from the other merits of this essay, we shall observe in it splendidly elaborated material for an answer to the general question of the relation of forms to the material conditions of their existence, and an excellent formulation of this question for a definite sphere.” “The relation of forms to the material conditions of their existence”—why, that is the very problem of the interrelation between the various aspects of social life, of the superstructure of ideological social relations on the basis of material relations, a problem whose well-known solution constitutes the doctrine of materialism. Let us proceed. “In point of fact, the whole of ‘Capital’” (my italics) “is devoted to an inquiry into how a form of society, once it has emerged, continues to develop and accentuates its typical features, subjecting to itself and assimilating discoveries, inventions and improvements in methods of production, new markets and science itself and compels them to work for it, and of how, finally, the given form cannot stand up against further changes in material conditions.” An astonishing thing! In 1877, “the whole of Capital was devoted to a materialist inquiry into a particular form of society (what else does materialism consist in, if not in explaining forms of society by material conditions?), whereas in 1894 it appears that it is not even known where, in what work, an exposition of this materialism should be sought!

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In 1877, Capital contained an “inquiry into” how “a particular form” (the capitalist form, is it not?) “cannot” (mark that!) “stand up against further changes in material conditions,”—whereas in 1894 it turns out that there has been no inquiry at all and that the conviction that the capitalist form cannot withstand any further development of the productive forces—rests “entirely at the end of the Hegelian triad”! In 1877, Mr. Mikhailovsky wrote that “the analysis of the relations of the given form of society to the material conditions of its existence will for ever” (my italics) “remain a monument to the author’s logical powers and vast erudition,” whereas in 1894 he declares that the doctrine of materialism has never and nowhere been scientifically verified and proved. An astonishing thing! What does it really mean? What has happened? Two things have happened. Firstly, the Russian, peasant socialism of the seventies—which “snorted” at freedom because of its bourgeois character, fought the “clear-browed liberals” who zealously covered up the antagonistic nature of Russian life, and dreamed of a peasant revolution—has completely decayed and has begotten that vulgar, philistine liberalism which discerns an “encouraging impression” in the progressive trends of peasant farming, forgetting that they are accompanied (and determined) by the wholesale expropriation of the peasantry. Secondly, in 1877 Mr. Mikhailovsky was so engrossed in his task of defending the “sanguine” (i.e., revolutionary socialist) Marx from the liberal critics that he failed to observe the incompatibility of Marx’s method and his own. And then this irreconcilable contradiction between dialectical materialism and subjective sociology was explained to him—explained by Engels’ articles and books, and by the Russian Social-Democrats (one often meets with very apt comments on Mr. Mikhailovsky in Plekhanov’s writings)—and Mr. Mikhailovsky, instead of seriously sitting down to reconsider the whole question, simply took the bit between his teeth. Instead of welcoming Marx (as he did in 1872 and 1877) 59 he now barks at him under cover of dubious praise, and rages and splutters against the Russian Marxists for refusing to rest content with the defence of the economically weakest,” with warehouses

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and improvements in the countryside, with museums and artels for handicraftsmen, and similar well-meaning philistine ideas of progress, and for wanting to remain “sanguine” people, advocates of social revolution, and to teach, guide and organise the really revolutionary elements of society. After this brief excursion into the realm of the distant past, one may, we think, conclude this examination of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s “criticism” of Marx’s theory. Let us then try to sum up and recapitulate the critic’s “arguments.” The doctrine he set out to demolish is based, firstly, on the materialist conception of history, and, secondly, on the dialectical method. As to the first, the critic began by declaring that he did not know in which work materialism was expounded. Not having found such an exposition anywhere, he himself set about concocting an explanation of what materialism is. In order to give an idea of the excessive claims of this materialism, he concocted the story that the materialists claim to have explained the entire past, present and future of mankind—and when it was subsequently shown by reference to the authentic statements of the Marxists that they regard only one social formation as having been explained, the critic decided that the materialists narrow the scope of materialism, whereby, he asserts, they defeat themselves. In order to give an idea of the methods by which this materialism was worked out, he invented the story that the materialists themselves had confessed to the inadquacy of their knowledge for the elaboration of scientific socialism, despite the fact that Marx and Engels confessed only to the insufficiency of their knowledge (in 1845-1846) of economic history in general, and despite the fact that they never published the essay which testified to the insufficiency of their knowledge. After these preludes, we were treated to the criticism itself: Capital was annihilated because it dealt with only one period, whereas the critic wants to have all periods; and also because it did not affirm economic materialism, but simply touched upon it— arguments, evidently, so weighty and serious as to compel the recognition that materialism had never been scientifical-

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ly substantiated. Then the fact was cited against materialism that a man totally unconnected with this doctrine, having studied prehistoric times in an entirely different country, also arrived at materialist conclusions. To show, further, that it was absolutely wrong to drag procreation into materialism, that this was nothing but a verbal artifice, the critic proceeded to prove that economic relations are a superstructure based on sexual and family relations. The statements made thereupon by our weighty critic for the edification of the materialists enriched us with the profound truth that inheritance is impossible without procreation, that a complex psychology “adheres” to the products of this procreation, and that children are brought up in the spirit of their fathers. In passing, we also learnt that national ties are a continuation and generalisation of gentile ties. Continuing his theoretical researches into materialism, the critic noted that the content of many of the Marxists’ arguments consisted in the assertion that oppression and exploitation of the masses were “necessary” under the bourgeois regime and that this regime must “necessarily” turn into a socialist regime, after which he hastened to declare that necessity is too general a bracket (if we omit what, exactly, people consider necessary) and that therefore Marxists are mystics and metaphysicians. The critic also declared that Marx’s polemic against the idealists was “one-sided,” but he did not say a word about the relation of these idealists’ views to the subjective method and the relation of Marx’s dialectical materialism to these views. As to the second pillar of Marxism—the dialectical method—one push by the bold critic was enough to cast it to the ground. And the push was very well directed: the critic toiled and moiled with prodigious effort to disprove the notion that anything can be proved by triads, ignoring the fact that the dialectical method does not consist in triads at all, but that it consists precisely in the rejection of the methods of idealism and subjectivism in sociology. Another push was specially directed at Marx: with the help of the valorous Herr Dühring, the critic ascribed to Marx the incredible absurdity of having tried to prove the necessity of the doom of capitalism by means of triads—and then victoriously combated this absurdity.

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Such is the epic of the brilliant “victories” of “our wellknown sociologist”! How very “edifying” (Burenin) it was to contemplate these victories! We cannot refrain at this point from touching on another circumstance, which has no direct bearing on the criticism of Marx’s doctrine, but is extremely characteristic for an understanding of the critic’s ideals and of his conception of reality. It is his attitude to the working-class movement in the West. Above we quoted Mr. Mikhailovsky’s statement that materialism had not justified itself in “science” (perhaps in the science of the German “friends of the people”?); but this materialism, argues Mr. Mikhailovsky, “is really spreading very rapidly among the working class.” How does Mr. Mikhailovsky explain this fact? “The success,” he says, “enjoyed by economic materialism in breadth, so to speak, and its dissemination in a critically unverified form, are chiefly due to the day-to-day practice established by prospects for the future, and not to science.” What other meaning can there be in this clumsy phrase about practice “established” by prospects for the future than that materialism is spreading not because it correctly explains reality, but because it turns away from reality towards prospects? And he goes on to say: “These prospects require of the German working class which is adopting them and of those who take a warm interest in its future neither knowledge nor the effort of critical thinking. They require only faith.” In other words, the spread of materialism and scientific socialism in breadth is due to the fact that this doctrine promises the workers a better future! But a most elementary acquaintance with the history of socialism and of the working-class movement in the West is enough to reveal the utter absurdity and falsity of this explanation. Everybody knows that scientific socialism never painted any prospects for the future as such: it confined itself to analysing the present bourgeois regime, to studying the trends of development of the capitalist social organisation, and that is all. “We do not say to the world,” Marx wrote as far back as 1843, and he fulfilled this programme to the letter, “we do not say to the world: ‘Cease struggling—your whole struggle is senseless.’ All we do is to provide it with a true slo-

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gan of struggle. We only show the world what it is actually struggling for, and consciousness is a thing which the world must acquire, whether it likes it or not.” 60 Everybody knows that Capital, for instance—the chief and basic work in which scientific socialism is expounded—restricts itself to the most general allusions to the future and merely traces those already existing elements from which the future system grows. Everybody knows that as far as prospects for the future are concerned incomparably more was contributed by the earlier socialists, who described future society in every detail, desiring to inspire mankind with a picture of a system under which people get along without conflict and under which their social relations are based not on exploitation but on true principles of progress that conform to the conditions of human nature. Nevertheless, despite the whole phalanx of very talented people who expounded these ideas, and despite the most firmly convinced socialists, their theories stood aloof from life and their programmes were not connected with the political movements of the people until large-scale machine industry drew the mass of proletarian workers into the vortex of political life, and until the true slogan of their struggle was found. This slogan was found by Marx, “not a utopian, but a strict and, in places, even dry scientist” (as Mr. Mikhailovsky called him in the long distant past—in 1872); and it was certainly not found by means of prospects, but by a scientific analysis of the present bourgeois regime, by an elucidation of the necessity of exploitation under this regime, by an investigation of the laws of its development. Mr. Mikhailovsky may, of course, assure the readers of Russkoye Bogatstvo that neither knowledge nor an effort of thinking is required to understand this analysis, but we have already seen in his own case (and shall see it to a still greater extent in the case of his economist collaborator 61 ) so gross a lack of understanding of the elementary truths established by this analysis that such a statement, of course, can only provoke a smile. It remains an indisputable fact that the workingclass movement spreads and develops precisely where and to the extent that large-scale capitalist machine industry develops; the socialist doctrine is successful precisely when it stops arguing about social conditions that conform to

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human nature and sets about making a materialist analysis of contemporary social relations and explaining the necessity for the present regime of exploitation. Having tried to evade the real reasons for the success of materialism among the workers by ascribing the attitude of this doctrine to “prospects” in a manner directly contrary to the truth, Mr. Mikhailovsky goes on to scoff in the most vulgar and philistine way at the ideas and tactics of the West-European working-class movement. As we have seen, he was unable to adduce a single argument against Marx’s proofs of the inevitability of the capitalist system being transformed into a socialist system as a result of the socialisation of labour. And yet he jeers in the most blatant manner at the idea of an “army of proletarians” preparing to expropriate the capitalists, “whereupon all class conflict will cease and peace on earth and goodwill among men will reign.” He, Mr. Mikhailovsky, knows far simpler and surer paths to the achievement of socialism than this: all that is required is that the “friends of the people” should indicate in greater detail the “clear and unalterable” paths of the “desired economic evolution”—and then these friends of the people will most likely “be called in” to solve “practical economic problems” (see the article “Problems of Russia’s Economic Development” by Mr. Yuzhakov in Russkoye Bogatstvo, No. 11) and meanwhile—meanwhile the workers must wait, must rely on the friends of the people and not begin, with “unjustified self-assurance,” an independent struggle against the exploiters. Desiring to strike a deathblow at this “unjustified self-assurance,” our author waxes highly indignant at “this science that can almost fit into a pocket dictionary.” How terrible, indeed! Science— and Social-Democratic penny pamphlets that can fit into the pocket!! Is it not obvious how unjustifiably self-assured are those who value science only insofar as it teaches the exploited to wage an independent struggle for their emancipation, teaches them to keep away from all “friends of the people” engaged in glossing over class antagonisms and desirous of taking the whole business upon themselves— those who, therefore, expound this science in penny publications which so shock the philistines? How different it would be if the workers placed their fate in the hands of

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the “friends of the people”! They would show them a real, voluminous, university and philistine science; they would acquaint them in detail with a social organisation that conforms to human nature, provided only—the workers agreed to wait and did not themselves begin the struggle with such unjustified self-assurance!

Before passing to the second part of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s “criticism,” which this time is not directed against Marx’s theory in general but against the Russian Social-Democrats in particular, we shall have to make a little digression. When criticising Marx, Mr. Mikhailovsky not only made no attempt to give an exact exposition of Marx’s theory but horribly distorted it, and in just the same way he now most unscrupulously garbles the ideas of the Russian SocialDemocrats. The truth must be restored. This can be done most conveniently by comparing the ideas of the earlier Russian socialists with the ideas of the Social-Democrats. I borrow an account of the former from an article by Mr. Mikhailovsky in Russkaya Mysl, 1892, No. 6, in which he also spoke of Marxism (and spoke of it—be it said in reproach to him—in a decent tone, without dealing with problems which, in a censored press, can be treated only in Burenin fashion, without confusing the Marxists with all sorts of riffraff) and expounded his own views in opposition to Marxism—or, at least, if not in opposition to, then parallel to Marxism. Of course, I have not the least desire to offend either Mr. Mikhailovsky, by classing him among the socialists, or the Russian socialists, by putting Mr. Mikhailovsky on a par with them; but I think that the line of argument is essentially the same in both cases, the difference being only in the degree of firmness, straightforwardness and consistency of their convictions. Describing the ideas of Otechestvenniye Zapiski, Mr. Mikhailovsky wrote: “We included the ownership of the land by the tiller and of the implements of labour by the producer among moral and political ideals.” The point of departure, as you see, is most well-intentioned, inspired by the best

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wishes.... “The medieval forms of labour * still existing in our country had been seriously shaken, but we saw no reason to put a complete end to them for the sake of any doctrine whatever, liberal or non-liberal.” Strange argument! Obviously, “forms of labour” of any kind can be shaken only if they are superseded by some other forms; yet we do not find our author (nor would we find any of his like-minded friends, for that matter) even attempting to analyse and to explain these new forms, or to ascertain why they supplant the old. Stranger still is the second half of the tirade: “We saw no reason to put an end to these forms for the sake of any doctrine.” What means do “we” (i.e., the socialists—see the above reservation) possess to “put an end” to forms of labour, that is, to reconstruct the existing production relations between the members of society? Is not the idea of remaking these relations in accordance with a doctrine absurd? Listen to what comes next; “Our task is not to rear, out of our own national depths, a civilisation that is positively ‘original’; but neither is it to transplant Western civilisation to our own country in toto, together with all the contradictions that are tearing it apart; we must take what is good from wherever we can; and whether it be our own or foreign is not a matter of principle, but of practical convenience. Surely, this is so simple, clear and understandable that there is nothing even to discuss.” Indeed, how simple it is! “Take” what is good from everywhere—and the trick is done! From the medieval forms “take” the labourer’s ownership of the means of production, and from the new (i.e., capitalist) forms “take” liberty, equality, enlightenment and culture. And there is nothing to discuss! Here the whole subjective method in sociology is as clear as daylight: sociology starts with a utopia—the labourer’s ownership of the land—and indicates the conditions for realising the desirable, namely, “take” what is good from here and from there. This philosopher takes a purely metaphysical view of social relations as of a simple

* “By medieval forms of labour”—the author explains in another place—“are meant not only communal landownership, handicraft industry and artel organisation. All these are undoubtedly medieval forms, but to them must be added all forms of ownership of land or implements of production by the labourer.”

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mechanical aggregation of various institutions, a simple mechanical concatenation of various phenomena. He plucks out one of these phenomena—the cultivator’s ownership of the land in its medieval forms—and thinks that it can be transplanted to all other forms, just as a brick can be transferred from one building to another. But that is not studying social relations; it is mutilating the material to be studied. In reality, there was no such thing as the cultivator’s ownership of the land existing separately and independently, as you have taken it; it was only one of the links in the then existing production relations, which consisted in the land being divided up among large landed proprietors, landlords, who allotted it to the peasants in order to exploit them, so that the land was, as it were, wages in kind: it provided the peasant with necessary products, so that he might be able to produce a surplus product for the landlord; it provided the means for the peasants to render feudal service to the landlord. Why did the author not follow up this system of production relations, instead of confining himself to plucking out one phenomenon and thus presenting it in an absolutely false light? Because the author does not know how to handle social problems: he (I repeat, I am using Mr. Mikhailovsky’s arguments only as an example for criticising Russian socialism as a whole) does not set out at all to explain the then existing “forms of labour” and to present them as a definite system of production relations, as a definite social formation. To use Marx’s expression, the dialectical method, which requires us to regard society as a living organism in its functioning and development, is alien to him. Without even asking himself why the old forms of labour are supplanted by the new, he repeats exactly the same error when he discusses these new forms. For him it is enough to note that these forms “shake” the cultivator’s ownership of the land—that is, speaking more generally, find expression in the separation of the producer from the means of production—and to condemn this for not conforming to the ideal. And here again his argument is utterly absurd: he plucks out one phenomenon (land dispossession), without even atlempting to present it as an element of a now different system of production relations based on commodity economy, which

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necessarily begets competition among the commodity producers, inequality, the ruin of some and the enrichment of others. He noted one thing, the ruin of the masses, and put aside the other, the enrichment of the minority, and this made it impossible for him to understand either. And such methods he calls “seeking answers to the questions of life clothed in flesh and blood” (Russkoye Bogatstvo, 1894, No. 1), when, as a matter of fact, quite the contrary is the case: unable and unwilling to explain reality, to look it straight in the face, he ignominiously fled from these questions of life, with its struggle of the propertied against the propertyless, to the realm of innocent utopias. This he calls “seeking answers to the questions of life in the ideal treatment of their burning and complex actual reality” (Russkoye Bogatstvo, No. 1), when, as a matter of fact, he did not even attempt to analyse and explain this actual reality. Instead, he presented us with a utopia contrived by senselessly plucking individual elements from various social formations—taking one thing from the medieval form, another from the “new” form, and so on. It is obvious that a theory based on this was bound to stand aloof from actual social evolution, for the simple reason that our utopians had to live and act not under social relations formed from elements taken from here and from there, but under those which determine the relation of the peasant to the kulak (the enterprising muzhik), of the handicraftsman to the buyer-up, of the worker to the factory owner, and which they completely failed to understand. Their attempts and efforts to remould these un-understood relations in accordance with their ideal were bound to end in failure. Such, in very general outline, was how the problem of socialism stood in Russia when “the Russian Marxists appeared on the scene.” What they began with was a criticism of the subjective methods of the earlier socialists. Not satisfied with merely stating the fact of exploitation and condemning it, they desired to explain it. Seeing that the whole post-Reform history of Russia consisted in the ruin of the masses and the enrichment of a minority, observing the colossal expropriation of the small producers side by side with universal technical progress, noting that these polarising tendencies

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arose and increased wherever, and to the extent that, commodity economy developed and became consolidated, they could not but conclude that they were confronted with a bourgeois (capitalist) organisation of social economy, necessarily giving rise to the expropriation and oppression of the masses. Their practical programme was directly determined by this conviction; this programme was to join in the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, the struggle of the propertyless classes against the propertied, which constitutes the principal content of economic reality in Russia, from the most out-of-the-way village to the most up-todate and perfected factory. How were they to join in? The answer was again suggested by reality. Capitalism had brought the principal branches of industry to the stage of large-scale machine industry; by thus socialising production, it had created the material conditions for a new system and had at the same time created a new social force—the class of factory workers, the urban proletariat. Being subjected to the same bourgeois exploitation—for such, in its economic essence, is the exploitation to which the whole working population of Russia is subjected—this class, however, has been placed in a special, favourable position as far as its emancipation is concerned: it no longer has any ties with the old society based entirely on exploitation; the very conditions of its labour and the circumstances of life organise it, compel it to think and enable it to step into the arena of political struggle. It was only natural that the Social-Democrats should direct all their attention to, and base all their hopes on, this class, that they should reduce their programme to the development of its class consciousness, and direct all their activities towards helping it rise to wage a direct political struggle against the present regime, and towards drawing the whole Russian proletariat into this struggle. Let us now see how Mr. Mikhailovsky fights the SocialDemocrats. What arguments does he level against their theoretical views, against their political, socialist activity? The theoretical views of the Marxists are set forth by the critic in the following manner:

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“The truth” (the Marxists are represented as declaring) “is that in accordance with the immanent laws of historical necessity Russia will develop her own capitalist production, with all its inherent contradictions and the swallowing up of the small capitalists by the large, and meanwhile the muzhik, divorced from the land, will turn into a proletarian, unite, become ‘socialised,’ and the trick is done, the hat reappears, and it only remains to put the hat on the head of now happy mankind.” And so, if you please, the Marxists do not differ in any way from the “friends of the people” in their conception of reality; they differ only in their idea of the future: they do not deal at all, it appears, with the present, but only with “prospects.” There can be no doubt that this is Mr. Mikhailovsky’s idea; the Marxists, he says, “are fully convinced that there is nothing utopian in their forecasts of the future, and that everything has been weighed and measured in accordance with the strict dictates of science”; finally and even more explicitly: the Marxists “believe in, and profess, the immutability of an abstract historical scheme.” In a word, we have before us that most banal and vulgar accusation against the Marxists long employed by all who have nothing substantial to bring against their views. “The Marxists profess the immutability of an abstract historical scheme!!” But this is a downright lie and invention! No Marxist has ever argued anywhere that there “must be” capitalism in Russia “because” there was capitalism in the West, and so on. No Marxist has ever regarded Marx’s theory as some universally compulsory philosophical scheme of history, as anything more than an explanation of a particular social-economic formation. Only Mr. Mikhailovsky, the subjective philosopher, has managed to display such a lack of understanding of Marx as to attribute to him a universal philosophical theory; and in reply to this, he received from Marx the quite explicit explanation that he was knocking at the wrong door. No Marxist has ever based his Social-Democratic views on anything but the conformity of theory with reality and the history of the given, i.e., the Russian, social and economic relations; and he could not have done so, because this demand on theory was quite defi-

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nitely and clearly proclaimed and made the corner-stone of the whole doctrine by the founder of “Marxism” himself—Marx. Of course, Mr. Mikhailovsky may refute these statements as much as he pleases, by arguing that he has heard “with his own ears” the profession of an abstract historical scheme. But what does it matter to us, Social-Democrats, or to anybody else, that Mr. Mikhailovsky has had occasion to hear all sorts of absurd nonsense from people he has talked to? Does it not merely show that he is very fortunate in the choice of the people he talks to, and nothing more? It is very possible, of course, that the witty interlocutors of the witty philosopher called themselves Marxists, SocialDemocrats, and so forth—but who does not know that nowadays (as was noted long ago) every scoundrel likes to array himself in “red” garments? * And if Mr. Mikhailovsky is so perspicacious that he cannot distinguish these “mummers” from Marxists, or if he has understood Marx so profoundly as not to have noticed this criterion—most emphatically advanced by Marx—of the whole doctrine (the formulation of “what is going on before our eyes”), it only proves again that Mr. Mikhailovsky is not clever, and nothing else. At any rate, since he undertook a polemic in the press against the “Social-Democrats,” he should have had in mind the group of socialists who have long borne that name and have borne it alone—so that others cannot be confused with them—and who have their literary representatives, Plekhanov and his circle. 62 And had he done so—and that obviously is what anybody with any decency should have done—and had he even consulted the first Social-Democratic work, Plekhanov’s Our Differences, he would have found in its very first pages a categorical declaration made by the author on behalf of all the members of the circle: “We in no case wish to cover our programme with the authority of a great name” (i.e., the authority of Marx). Do you understand Russian, Mr. Mikhailovsky? Do you understand the difference between professing abstract

* All this is said on the assumption that Mr. Mikhailovsky has indeed heard professions of abstract historical schemes and has not invented anything. But I consider it absolutely imperative in this connection to make the reservation that I give this only for what it is worth.

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schemes and entirely disclaiming the authority of Marx when passing judgement on Russian affairs? Do you realise that you acted dishonestly by representing the first opinion you happened to hear from your interlocutors as Marxist, and by ignoring the published declaration made by a prominent member of Social-Democracy on behalf of the whole group? And then the declaration becomes even more explicit: “I repeat,” Plekhanov says, “that the most consistent Marxists may disagree in the appraisal of the present Russian situation”; our doctrine is the “first attempt at applying this particular scientific theory to the analysis of very complicated and entangled social relations.” It would seem difficult to speak more clearly: the Marxists unreservedly borrow from Marx’s theory only its invaluable methods, without which an elucidation of social relations is impossible, and, consequently, they see the criterion of their judgement of these relations not in abstract schemes and suchlike nonsense at all, but in its fidelity and conformity to reality. Perhaps you think that in making these statements the author actually had something else in mind? But that is not so. The question he was dealing with was—“must Russia pass through the capitalist phase of development?” Hence, the question was not given a Marxist formulation at all, but was in conformity with the subjective methods of various native philosophers of ours, who see the criterion of this “must” in the policy of the authorities, or in the activities of “society,” or in the ideal of a society that “corresponds to human nature,” and similar twaddle. So it is fair to ask, how should a man who believes in abstract schemes have answered such a question? Obviously, he would have spoken of the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process, of the general philosophical importance of Marx’s theory, of the inevitability of every country passing through the phase of ... and so on and so forth. And how did Plekhanov answer it? In the only way a Marxist could. He left aside entirely the question of the “must,” as being an idle one that could be of interest only to subjectivists, and dealt exclusively with real social and economic

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relations and their actual evolution. And that is why he gave no direct answer to this wrongly formulated question, but instead replied: “Russia has entered the capitalist path.” And Mr. Mikhailovsky talks with the air of an expert about belief in abstract historical schemes, about the immanent laws of necessity, and similar incredible nonsense! And he calls this “a polemic against the Social-Democrats”!! If this is a polemicist, then I simply cannot understand what a windbag is! One must also observe in connection with Mr. Mikhailovsky’s argument quoted above that he presents the views of the Social-Democrats as being: “Russia will develop her own capitalist production.” Evidently, in the opinion of this philosopher, Russia has not got “her own” capitalist production. The author apparently shares the opinion that Russian capitalism is confined to one and a half million workers. We shall later on again meet with this childish idea of our “friends of the people,” who class all the other forms of exploitation of free labour under heaven knows what heading. “Russia will develop her own capitalist production with all its inherent contradictions, and meanwhile the muzhik, separated from the land, will turn into a proletarian.” The farther in the wood, the more trees there are! So there are no “inherent contradictions” in Russia? Or, to put it plainly, there is no exploitation of the mass of the people by a handful of capitalists, there is no ruin of the vast majority of the population and no enrichment of a few? The muzhik has still to be separated from the land? But what is the entire post-Reform history of Russia, if not the wholesale expropriation of the peasantry, proceeding with unparalleled intensity? One must possess great courage indeed to say such things publicly. And Mr. Mikhailovsky possesses that courage: “Marx dealt with a ready-made proletariat and a ready-made capitalism, whereas we have still to create them.” Russia has still to create a proletariat?! In Russia—the only country where such a hopeless poverty of the masses and such shameless exploitation of the working people can be found; which has been compared (and legitimately so) to England as regards the condition of the poor; and where the starvation of millions of people is a permanent thing existing side by side, for instance,

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with a steady increase in the export of grain—in Russia there is no proletariat!! I think Mr. Mikhailovsky deserves to have a monument erected to him in his own lifetime for these classic words! * We shall, incidentally, see later that it is a constant and most consistent tactic of the “friends of the people” to shut their eyes pharisaically to the intolerable condition of the working people in Russia, to depict this condition as having merely been “shaken,” so that only the efforts of “cultured society” and the government are needed for everything to be put on the right track. These knights think that if they shut their eyes to the fact that the condition of the working masses is bad not because it has been “shaken,” but because these masses are being shamelessly robbed by a handful of exploiters, that if they bury their heads in the sand like ostriches so as not to see these exploiters, the exploiters will disappear. And when the Social-Democrats tell them that it is shameful cowardice to fear to look reality in the face, when they take the fact of exploitation as their starting-point and say that its only possible explanation lies in the bourgeois organisation of Russian society, which is splitting the mass of the people into a proletariat and a bourgeoisie, and in the class character of the Russian state, which is nothing but the organ of the rule of this bourgeoisie, and that therefore the only way out lies in the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie—these “friends of the people” begin to howl that the Social-Democrats want to dispossess the people of their land!! that they want to destroy our people’s economic organisation!! We now come to the most outrageous part of all this indecent, to say the least, “polemic,” namely, Mr. Mikhai-

* But perhaps here too, Mr. Mikhailovsky may try to wriggle out by declaring that he had no intention of saying that there was no proletariat at all in Russia, but only that there was no capitalist proletariat? Is that so? Then why did you not say so? The whole question is one of whether the Russian proletariat is a proletariat characteristic of the bourgeois or of some other organisation of social economy. Who is to blame if in the course of two whole articles you did not utter a word about this, the only serious and important question, but preferred instead to talk all sorts of nonsense, and reach the craziest conclusions?

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lovsky’s “criticism” (?) of the political activities of the Social-Democrats. Everybody realises that the activities carried on among the workers by socialists and agitators cannot be honestly discussed in our legal press, and that the only thing a decent censored periodical can do in this connection is to “maintain a tactful silence.” Mr. Mikhailovsky has forgotten this very elementary rule, and has not scrupled to use his monopoly contact with the reading public in order to sling mud at the socialists. However, means of combating this unscrupulous critic will be found even if outside of legal publications. “As far as I understand,” Mr. Mikhailovsky says with assumed näiveté, “the Russian Marxists can be divided into three categories: Marxist spectators (indifferent observers of the process), passive Marxists (they only “allay the birth pangs”; they “are not interested in the people on the land, and direct their attention and hopes to those who are already separated from the means of production”), and active Marxists (who bluntly insist on the further ruin of the countryside).” What is this?! Mr. Critic must surely know that the Russian Marxists are socialists whose point of departure is the view that the reality of our environment is capitalist society, and that there is only one way out of it—the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. How, then, and on what grounds, does he mix them up with some sort of senseless vulgarity? What right (moral, of course) has he to extend the term Marxists to people who obviously do not accept the most elementary and fundamental tenets of Marxism, people who have never and nowhere acted as a distinct group and have never and nowhere announced a programme of their own? Mr. Mikhailovsky has left himself a number of loopholes for justifying such outrageous methods. “Perhaps,” he jokes with the easy air of a society fop, “these are not real Marxists, but they consider and proclaim themselves as such.” Where have they proclaimed it, and when? In the liberal and radical salons of St. Petersburg? In private letters? Be it so. Well, then, talk to them in your salons and in your correspondence! But you come out publicly and in the press against people who (under the ban-

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ner of Marxism) have never come out publicly anywhere. And you have the effrontery to claim that you are polemising against “Social-Democrats,” although you know that this name is borne only by one group of revolutionary socialists, and that nobody else should be confused with them! * Mr. Mikhailovsky twists and turns like a schoolboy caught red-handed: I am not the least to blame here—he tries to make the reader believe—I “heard it with my own ears and saw it with my own eyes.” Excellent! We are quite willing to believe that there is nobody in your field of vision but vulgarians and scoundrels. But what have we, Social-Democrats, to do with it? Who does not know that “at the present time, when” not only socialist activity, but any social activity that is at all independent and honest evokes political persecution—for every one actually working under some banner—be it Narodovolism, 63 Marxism, or even, let us say, constitutionalism—there are several score phrase-mongers who under cover of that name conceal their liberal cowardice, and, in addition, perhaps, several downright rascals who are feathering their own nests? Is it not obvious that only the meanest vulgarity could make any of these trends responsible for the fact that its banner is being soiled (privately and secretly, at that) by all sorts of riffraff? Mr. Mikhailovsky’s whole argument is one chain of distortions, misrepresentations, and manipulations. We saw above that he completely distorted the “truths” which are the Social-Democrats’ starting-point, presenting them

* I shall dwell on at least one factual reference which occurs in Mr. Mikhailovsky’s article. Anybody who has read that article will have to admit that he includes even Mr. Skvortsov (author of The Economic Causes of Starvation) among the “Marxists.” But, as a matter of fact, this gentleman does not call himself a Marxist, and the most elementary acquaintance with the works of the Social-Democrats is sufficient for anybody to see that from their standpoint he is nothing but a most vulgar bourgeois. What sort of Marxist is he if he does not understand that the social environment for which he projects his progressive schemes is a bourgeois environment, and that therefore all “agricultural improvements” actually to be observed even in peasant farming are bourgeois progress, which improves the position of a minority but proletarianises the masses! What sort of Marxist is he if he does not understand that the state to which he addresses his projects is a class state, capable only of supporting the bourgeoisie and oppressing the proletariat!

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in a way in which no Marxist at any time or place has, or could have, presented them. And if he had set forth the actual Social-Democratic conception of Russian reality, he could not but have seen that one can “conform” to these views in only one way, namely, by helping to develop the class consciousness of the proletariat, by organising and uniting it for the political struggle against the present regime. He has, however, one other trick up his sleeve. With an air of injured innocence he pharisaically lifts up his eyes to heaven and unctuously declares: “I am very glad to hear that. But I cannot understand what you are protesting against” (that is exactly what he says in Russkoye Bogatstvo, No. 2). “Read my comment on passive Marxists more attentively and you will see that I say: from the ethical standpoint, no objection can be made.” This, of course, is nothing but a rehash of his former wretched subterfuges. Tell us, please, how one would characterise the conduct of a person who declared that he was criticising socialrevolutionary Narodism (at a time when no other type of Narodism had yet appeared—I take such a period), and who proceeded to say approximately the following: “The Narodniks, as far as I understand, are divided into three categories: the consistent Narodniks, who completely accept the ideas of the muzhik and, in exact accordance with his desires, make a general principle of the birch and wife-beating and generally further the abominable policy of the government of the knout and the club, which, you know, has been called a people’s policy; then, shall we say, the cowardly Narodniks, who are not interested in the opinions of the muzhik, and are only striving to transplant to Russia an alien revolutionary movement by means of associations and suchlike—against which, however, no objection can be made from the ethical standpoint, unless it be the slipperiness of the path, which may easily convert a cowardly Narodnik into a consistent or courageous one; and, lastly, the courageous Narodniks, who carry out to the full the people’s ideals of the enterprising muzhik, and accordingly settle on the land in order to live as kulaks in good earnest.” All decent people, of course, would characterise this as vile and vulgar scoffing. And if, furthermore, the person

FROM MARX TO MAO




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who said such things could not be rebutted by the Narodniks in the same press; if, moreover, the ideas of these Narodniks had hitherto been expounded only illegally, so that many people had no exact idea of what they were and might easily believe whatever they were told about the Narodniks—then whoever would agree that such a person is.... But perhaps Mr. Mikhailovsky himself has not yet quite forgotten the word that fits here. But enough! Many similar insinuations by Mr. Mikhailovsky still remain, but I know of no job more fatiguing, more thankless and more disgusting than to have to wade through this filth, to collect insinuations scattered here and there, to compare them and to search for at least one serious objection. Enough! April 1894

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE 64

In the text of the article the reader will find references to a further examination of certain questions, whereas actually no such examination is made. The reason is that the present article is only the first part of a reply to articles in Russkoye Bogatstvo about Marxism. Acute shortage of time prevented the timely appearance of this article, but we do not consider it possible to delay any longer; we are two months late as it is. That is why we have decided to issue an examination of Mr. Mikhailovsky’s “criticism” in the meantime without waiting until the whole article is printed. In the 2nd and 3rd parts, now in course of preparation, the reader will find, in addition to the examination here presented, a further one dealing with the social and economic views of other leading figures of Russkoye Bogatstvo, Messrs. Yuzhakov and S. Krivenko, in connection with an essay on the economic situation in Russia and the “ideas and tactics of the Social-Democrats” that follow therefrom.

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NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION 65

The present edition is an exact reproduction of the first. Having had no share whatever in compiling the text, we have not considered ourselves entitled to alter it in any way and have confined ourselves simply to the work of publication. Our motive for undertaking this work has been the confidence that the present pamphlet will serve to bring about some revival of our Social-Democratic propaganda. Believing that one indispensable corollary of SocialDemocratic convictions should be a readiness to promote such propaganda, we appeal to all who share the views of the author of the present pamphlet to assist by every means (especially, of course, by republication) in securing the widest possible circulation both of the present work and of all organs of Marxist propaganda in general. The present moment is particularly opportune. Russkoye Bogatstvo is assuming an increasingly provocative tone towards us. In an effort to paralyse the spread of Social-Democratic ideas in society, that magazine has gone so far as to accuse us outright of being indifferent to the interests of the proletariat and of insisting on the ruination of the masses. We make bold to think that by such methods it will only injure itself and pave the way for our victory. However, it should not be forgotten that these slanderers command all the material means for the most widespread propaganda of their slanders. They possess a magazine with a circulation of several thousand; they have reading-rooms and libraries at their disposal. Hence, if we are to prove to our enemies that even the advantages of a privileged position do not always ensure the success of insinuation, we must exert our every effort. We are fully confident that this effort will be forthcoming. July 1894

P A R T III

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Let us, in conclusion, make the acquaintance of Mr. Krivenko, another “friend of the people,” who also launches open war against the Social-Democrats. However, we shall not examine his articles (“Our Cultural Free Lances,” in No. 12, 1893, and “Travel Letters,” in No. 1, 1894) as we did those of Messrs. Mikhailovsky and Yuzhakov. An analysis in toto of their articles was essential to get a clear idea, in the first case, of the substance of their objections to materialism and Marxism in general, and, in the second, of their political-economic theories. Now, to get a complete idea of the “friends of the people,” we shall have to acquaint ourselves with their tactics, their practical proposals and their political programme. This programme they have not anywhere set forth directly and as consistently and fully as they have set out their theoretical views. I am therefore obliged to take it from various articles in a magazine whose contributors are unanimous enough not to contradict each other. I shall give preference to the above-mentioned articles of Mr. Krivenko’s merely because they furnish more material and because their author is as typical of the magazine as a practical man and a politician, as Mr. Mikhailovsky is a socialist and Mr. Yuzhakov is an economist. However, before passing on to their programme, there is one more theoretical point we consider it absolutely essential to deal with. We have seen how Mr. Yuzhakov disposes of matters with meaningless phrases about people’s land renting that supports people’s economy, etc., using them to cover up the fact that he does not understand the economic life of our peasants. He did not deal with the handicraft industries, but confined himself to data on the growth of large-scale factory industry. Now Mr. Krivenko repeats

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exactly the same sort of phrases about handicraft industries. He flatly contrasts “our people’s industry,” i.e., handicraft industries, to capitalist industry (No. 12, pp. 180-81). “People’s production” (sic!), says he, “in the majority of cases arises naturally,” whereas capitalist industry “is very often created artificially.” In another passage he contrasts “small-scale people’s industry” to “large-scale, capitalist industry.” If you were to ask what is the distinguishing feature of the former, you would only learn that it is “small” * and that the instruments of labour are united with the producer (I borrow this latter definition from Mr. Mikhailovsky’s above-mentioned article). But this is certainly far from defining its economic organisation—and, moreover, is absolutely untrue. Mr. Krivenko says, for example, that “small-scale people’s industry to this day yields a much larger total output and employs more hands than large-scale capitalist industry.” The author is evidently referring to data on the number of handicraftsmen, which is as many as 4 million, or, according to another estimate, 7 million. But who does not know that the form of economy predominating in our handicraft industries is the domestic system of large-scale production? that the bulk of the handicraftsmen occupy a position in production that is not independent at all, but, completely dependent, subordinate, that they do not process their own material but that of the merchant, who merely pays the handicraftsman a wage? Data on the predominance of this form have been cited even in legal literature. Let me quote, for example, the excellent work by the well-known statistician, S. Kharizomenov, published in Yuridichesky Vestnik 66 (1883, Nos. 11 and 12). Summarising the published data on our handicraft industries in the central gubernias, where they are most highly developed, S. Kharizomenov reached the conclusion that there is an absolute predominance of the domestic system of large-scale production, i.e., an unquestionably capitalist form of industry. “Defining the economic role of small-scale independent industry,” he says, “we arrive

* The velop a trick of phrases

only other thing you would learn is this: “From it may dereal (sic!) people’s industry,” says Mr. Krivenko. A common the “friends of the people” is to utter idle and senseless instead of giving a precise and direct description of reality.

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at the following conclusions: in Moscow Gubernia 86.5% of the annual turnover of handicraft industry is accounted for by the domestic system of large-scale production, and only 13.5% by small-scale independent industry. In the Alexandrov and Pokrov uyezds of Vladimir Gubernia, 96% of the annual turnover of handicraft industry falls to the share of the domestic system of large-scale production and manufacture, and only 4% is accounted for by small-scale independent industry.” Nobody, as far as we know, has tried to refute these facts; nor can they be refuted. How, then, can one ignore these facts, and say nothing about them, call such industry “people’s” in contradistinction to capitalist, and talk about the possibility of its developing into real industry? There can be only one explanation of this direct ignoring of facts, namely, the general tendency of the “friends of the people,” as of all Russian liberals, to gloss over class antagonism and the exploitation of the working people in Russia by representing all this as just plain “defects.” But perhaps, an additional cause lies in so profound a knowledge of the subject as is revealed, for instance, by Mr. Krivenko when he calls the “Pavlovo cutlery trade”— “a trade of a semi-artisan character.” The lengths of distortion to which the “friends of the people” will go are simply phenomenal! How can one speak here of artisan character, when the Pavlovo cutlers produce for the market and not to order? Or perhaps Mr. Krivenko regards as artisan industry the system under which a merchant orders articles from the handicraftsman and then sends them to Nizhni-Novgorod Fair? Funnily enough, this seems to be the case. As a matter of fact, the making of cutlery has least of all (compared with other Pavlovo industries) preserved the small-scale handicraft form, with its (seeming) independence of the producers. “The production of table and industrial cutlery,” * says N. F. Annensky, “is already largely approaching the factory, or, more correctly, the manufactory form.” Of the 396 handicraftsmen engaged in the making of table cutlery in Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia, only 62

* The largest of the Pavlovo trades, which produces 900,000 rubles’ worth of goods out of a total output of 2,750,000 rubles.

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(16%) work for the market, 273 (69%) work for a master, * and 61 (15%) are wage-workers. Hence, only one-sixth of them are not directly enslaved to an employer. As to the other branch of the cutlery industry—the production of folding-knives (penknives)—the same author says that it “occupies a position midway between the table-knife and the lock: the majority of the handicraftsmen in this branch are working for a master, but along with them there are still quite a number of independent handicraftsmen who have to do with the market.” In Nizhni-Novgorod Gubernia there are in all 2,552 handicraftsmen producing this sort of cutlery, of whom 48% (1,236) work for the market, 42% (1,058) work for a master, and 10% (258) are wage-workers. Consequently, here too the independent (?) handicraftsmen are in the minority. And those who work for the market are, of course, only apparently independent; actually they are no less enslaved to the capital of buyers-up. If we take the data for the industries of the entire Gorbatov Uyezd, NizhniNovgorod Gubernia, where 21,983 working people, or 84.5%, of all who work, ** are engaged in industries, we get the following (exact data on the economics of the industry are available for only 10,808 workers, in the following industries: metal, leather goods, saddlery, felt, and hemp spinning): 35.6% of the handicraftsmen work for the market, 46.7% work for a master, and 17.7% are wage-workers. Thus, here too we see the predominance of the domestic system of large-scale production, the predominance of relations under which labour is enslaved to capital. Another reason why the “friends of the people” so freely ignore facts of this kind is that their conception of capitalism has not advanced beyond the commonplace vulgar idea that a capitalist is a wealthy and educated employer who runs a large machine enterprise—and they refuse to

* I.e., for the merchant who supplies the handicraftsmen with materials and pays them ordinary wages for their labour. ** Exceptionalist Russian economists, who measure Russian capitalism by the number of factory workers (sic!), unceremoniously classify these working people, and the multitudes like them, as part of the agricultural population, who do not suffer from the yoke of capital but from pressure artificially exerted on the “people’s system” (???!!)

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consider the scientific content of the term. In the preceding chapter we saw that Mr. Yuzhakov dates the beginning of capitalism directly from machine industry, omitting simple co-operation and manufacture. This is a widespread error, which, incidentally, results in the capitalist organisation of our handicraft industries being ignored. It goes without saying that the domestic system of largescale production is a capitalist form of industry: here we have all its features—commodity economy already at a high level of development, the concentration of the means of production in the hands of individuals, and the expropriation of the mass of the workers, who have no means of production of their own and therefore apply their labour to those of others, working not for themselves but for the capitalist. Obviously, in its organisation, handicraft industry is pure capitalism; it differs from large-scale machine industry in being technically backward (chiefly because of the preposterously low wages) and in the fact that the workers retain diminutive farms. This latter circumstance particularly confuses the “friends of the people,” who, as befits true metaphysicians, are accustomed to think in naked and direct contrasts: “Yea, yea—nay, nay, and whatsoever is more than these comes from the evil one.” If the workers have no land—there is capitalism; if they have land—there is no capitalism. And they confine themselves to this soothing philosophy, losing sight of the whole social organisation of economy and forgetting the generally-known fact that ownership of land does not in the least do away with the dire poverty of these landowners, who are most shamelessly robbed by other such “peasant” landowners. They do not know, it seems, that capitalism—while still at a comparatively low level of development—was nowhere able to completely separate the worker from the land. For Western Europe, Marx established the law that only large-scale machine industry expropriates the worker once and for all. It is therefore obvious that the stock argument of there being no capitalism in our country since “the people own land” is quite meaningless, because the capitalism of simple co-operation and manufacture has never been connected anywhere with the worker’s complete separa-

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tion from the land, and yet, needless to say, it has not on that account ceased to be capitalism. As to large-scale machine industry in Russia—and this form is rapidly being assumed by the biggest and most important branches of our industry—here too, despite all the specific features of our life, it possesses the same property as everywhere in the capitalist West, namely, it absolutely will not tolerate the retention of the worker’s tie with the land. This fact has been proved, incidentally, by Dementyev with precise statistical material, from which he has drawn (quite independently of Marx) the conclusion that machine production is inseparably connected with the worker’s complete separation from the land. This investigation has demonstrated once again that Russia is a capitalist country, that the worker’s tie with the land in Russia is so feeble and unreal, and the power; of the man of property (the money owner, the buyer-up, the rich peasant, the manufactory owner, etc.) so firmly established, that one more technical advance will be enough for the “peasant” (?? who has long been living by the sale of his labour-power) to turn into a worker pure and simple. * The failure of the “friends of the people” to understand the economic organisation of our handicraft industries is far, however, from being confined to this. Their idea even of those industries where work is not done “for a master” is just as superficial as their idea of the cultivator (which we have already seen above). This, by the way, is quite natural in the case of gentlemen who presume to hold forth on questions of political economy when all they know, it seems, is that there is such a thing in the world as means of production, which “may” be united with the working people—and that is very good; but which “may” also be searated from them—and that is very bad. That will not take you far. Speaking of industries that are becoming capitalist and of those that are not (where “small-scale production can

* The domestic system of large-scale production is not only a capitalist system, but the worst kind of capitalist system, one under which the most intense exploitation of the working people is combined with the minimum opportunity for the workers to wage a struggle for their emancipation.

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freely exist”), Mr. Krivenko says, for one thing, that in certain branches “the basic expenditure on production” is very inconsiderable and that small-scale production is therefore possible. He cites as an example the brick industry, where the expenditure, he says, may be one-fifteenth of the annual turnover of the brickyards. As this is almost the only reference the author makes to facts (it is, I repeat, the most characteristic feature of subjective sociology that it fears a direct and precise description and analysis of reality, preferring to soar into the sphere of the “ideals” ... of the petty bourgeois), let us take it, in order to show what a false conception the “friends of the people” have of reality. We find a description of the brick industry (the making of bricks from white clay) in the economic statistics of the Moscow Zemstvo (Returns, Vol. VII, Book 1, Part 2, etc.). The industry is chiefly concentrated in three volosts of Bogorodskoye Uyezd, where there are 233 establishments, employing 1,402 workers (567, or 41%, being family workers, * and 835, or 59%, hired), with an annual aggregate output valued at 357,000 rubles. The industry is an old one, but has developed particularly during the past fifteen years owing to the building of a railway, which has greatly facilitated marketing. Before the railway was built the family form of production predominated, but it is now giving way to the exploitation of wage-labour. This industry, too, is not exempt from the dependence of the small industrialists on the bigger ones for marketing: owing to “lack of funds” the former sell the latter their bricks (sometimes “crude”— unbaked) on the spot at terribly low prices. However, we are also able to acquaint ourselves with the organisation of the industry apart from this dependence, thanks to the house-to-house census of handicraftsmen which is appended to the essay, where the number of workers and the annual aggregate output of each establishment are indicated. To ascertain whether the law that commodity economy is capitalist economy—i.e., is inevitably converted into the latter at a certain stage of development—applies to

* By “family” workers, as against hired, are meant working members of the masters’ families.

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this industry, we must compare the size of the establishments: the problem is precisely one of the relation between the small and the large establishments according to their role in output and their exploitation of wage-labour. Taking the number of workers as a basis, we divide the establishments of the handicraftsmen into three groups: I) establishments employing 1 to 5 workers (both family and hired); 11) employing 6 to 10 workers, and III) employing over 10 workers. Examining the size of establishments, the complement of workers and the value of the output in each group, we obtain the following data: Percentage distribution

Estabs. employing w.-wkrs.

Wage-workers

Ann. output per worker (rubles)

Establishments

Workers

Total output

Number of establishments*

Number of workers

Total output (rubles)

Absolute figures

Avg. number workers per establishment

Per cent

I. Employing 1-5 workers

2.8

25

19

251

72

34

34

167/43

476/92

119,500

II. Employing 6-10 workers

7.3

90

58

249

18

23

22

43/39

317/186

79,000

26.4 100

91

260

10

43

44

23/23

609/557 158,500

59

254 100 100 100 233/105 1,402/835 357,000

Groups of handicraftsmen according to number of workers

III. Employing over 10 workers Total . . . .

6.0

45

Take a glance at these figures and you will perceive the bourgeois, or, what is the same, the capitalist organisation of the industry: the larger the establishments, the higher the productivity of labour ** (the middle group is an

* The denominators indicate the number of establishments employing wage-workers and the number of wage-workers. Same in the next table. ** The annual output per worker in Group I is 251 rubles; in II—249, in III—260.

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213

exception), the greater the exploitation of wage-labour, * the greater the concentration of production. ** The third group, which almost entirely bases its economy on wage-labour, comprises 10% of the total number of establishments but accounts for 44% of the aggregate output. This concentration of the means of production in the hands of a minority, which is connected with the expropriation of the majority (the wage-workers); explains both the dependence of the small producers on buyers-up (the big industrialists are in fact buyers-up) and the oppression of labour in this industry. Hence we see that the cause of the expropriation of the working people and of their exploitation lies in the production relations themselves. The Russian Narodnik socialists, as we know, held the opposite view and considered that the cause of the oppression of labour in the handicraft industries did not lie in production relations (which were proclaimed to be based on a principle which precludes exploitation), but in something else—in policy, namely, agrarian and fiscal policy and so on. The question arises, what was, and is, the basis of the persistence of this opinion, which has now acquired almost the tenacity of a prejudice? Maybe it is the prevalence of a different concept of production relations in the handicraft industries? Not at all. It persists only because no attempt whatever is made to give an accurate and definite description of the facts, of the real forms of economic organisation; it persists only because the production relations are not singled out and submitted to an independent analysis. In a word, it persists solely due to a failure to understand the only scientific method of social science, namely, the materialist method. We can now understand the train of thought of our old socialists. As far as the handicraft industries are concerned, they attribute the cause of exploitation to things lying outside production relations; as far as large-scale, factory capitalism

* The proportion of establishments employing wage-labour is 25% in Group I, 90% in II and 100% in III; the proportion of wage-workers is 19%, 58% and 91% respectively. ** Group I, comprising 72% of the total establishments, accounts for 34% of the total output; II: 18% of the establishments, 22% of the output; III: 10% of the establishments, 44% of the output.

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V. I. L E N I N

is concerned, they could not help seeing that there the cause of exploitation lies precisely in the production relations. The result was an irreconcilable contradiction, an incongruity; where this large-scale capitalism could have come from, since there was nothing capitalist in the production relations of the handicraft industries (which had not been studied!)—passed comprehension. The conclusion follows naturally: failing to understand the connection between handicraft and capitalist industry they contrasted the former to the latter, as “people’s” to “artificial” industry. The idea appears that capitalism contradicts our “people’s system”—an idea that is very widespread and was quite recently presented to the Russian public in a revised and improved edition by Mr. Nikolai—on. This idea persists by inertia, despite its phenomenal illogicality: factory capitalism is judged on the basis of what it actually is in reality, whereas handicraft industry is judged on the basis of what it “might be”; the former on the basis of an analysis of production relations, the latter without even an attempt to examine the production relations separately, the matter being directly transferred to the sphere of politics. We have only to turn to an analysis of these production relations to find that the “people’s system” consists of these very same capitalist production relations, although in an undeveloped, embryonic state; that—if we reject the naïve prejudice that all handicraftsmen are equal, and accurately set forth the differences among them—the difference between the “capitalist” of the factory and works and the “handicraftsman” will at times prove to be less than the difference between one “handicraftsman” and another; and that capitalism does not contradict the “people’s system” but is the direct, next and immediate continuation and development of it. Perhaps, however, it will be argued that the example quoted is unsuitable; we may be told that the percentage of wage-workers in the given case is altogether too high?* But, as a matter of fact, the important thing here is not the absolute figures but the relations they disclose, rela* This is scarcely true of the industries of Moscow Gubernia, but it may be true, perhaps, with regard to the less developed industries of the rest of Russia.

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WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE

tions which are bourgeois in essence, and which do not cease to be such whether their bourgeois character is strongly or weakly marked. If you like, I shall take another example—one deliberately chosen for its weak bourgeois character. I take (from Mr. Isayev’s book on the industries of Moscow Gubernia) the pottery industry, “a purely domestic industry,” as the professor calls it. This industry may, of course, be taken as representative of the small-scale peasant industries: its technique is the simplest, its equipment quite small and the articles it produces of universal and essential use. Well then, thanks to the house-to-house census of the potters giving the same particulars as in the previous case, we are in a position to study the economic organisation of this industry too, one that is undoubtedly quite typical of the numerous Russian small, “people’s” industries. We divide the handicraftsmen into groups: I) those employing 1 to 3 workers (family and hired); II) those employing 4 to 5 workers, and III) those employing over 5 workers—and make the same calculation:

Percentage distribution

Estabs. employing w.-wkrs.

Wage-workers

Ann. output per worker (rubles)

Establishments

Workers

Total output

Number of establishments*

Number of workers

Total output (rubles)

Absolute figures

Avg. number workers per establishment

Per cent

I. Employing 1-3 workers

2.4

39

19

468

60

38

36

72/28

174/33

81,500

II. Employing 4-5 workers

4.3

48

20

498

27

32

32

33/16

144/29

71,800

III. Employing over 5 workers

8.4

100

65

533

13

30

32

16/16

134/87

71,500

3.7

49

33

497 100 100 100

121/60

452/149 224,800

Groups of handicraftsmen according to number of workers

Total . . . .

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Obviously, the relations in this industry too—and similar examples could be quoted indefinitely—are bourgeois: we find the same break-up arising out of commodity economy and it is a specifically capitalist break-up, leading to the exploitation of wage-labour, which already plays a primary part in the top group, where one-eighth of all the establishments and 30% of the total workers produce nearly one-third of the total output, and the productivity of labour is considerably above the average. These production relations alone are enough to explain the appearance and power of the buyers-up. We see how a minority, owning larger and more profitable establishments, and receiving a “net” income from the labour of others (in the top group of potters there is an average of 5.5 wage-workers per establishment), accumulate “savings,” while the majority are ruined, and even the petty masters (not to mention the wage-workers) are unable to make ends meet. It is obvious and inevitable that the latter should be enslaved to the former—inevitable precisely because of the capitalist character of the given production relations. These relations are: the product of social labour, organised by commodity economy, passes into the hands of individuals and in their hands serves as an instrument for oppressing and enslaving the working people, as a means of personal enrichment by the exploitation of the masses. And do not think that this exploitation, this oppression, is any less marked because relations of this kind are still poorly developed, because the accumulation of capital, concomitant with the ruination of the producers, is negligible. Quite the contrary. This only leads to cruder, serf forms of exploitation, to a situation where capital, not yet able to subjugate the worker directly, by the mere purchase of his labour-power at its value, enmeshes him in a veritable net of usurious extortion, binds him to itself by kulak methods, and as a result robs him not only of the surplus-value, but of an enormous part of his wages, too, and, what is more, grinds him down by preventing him from changing his “master,” and humiliates him by compelling him to regard as a boon the fact that capital “gives” (sic!) him work. It is obvious that not a single worker would ever consent to exchange his status for that of a Russian “independent” handicraftsman in “real,” “peo-

WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE

217

ple’s” industry. It is equally obvious that all the favourite measures of the Russian radicals either will not in the least affect the exploitation of the working people and their enslavement to capital, and will remain isolated experiments (artels), or will worsen the conditions of the working people (inalienability of allotments), or, lastly, will only refine, develop and consolidate the given capitalist relations (improvement of technique, loans, etc.). The “friends of the people,” however, will never be able to grasp the fact that despite its general wretchedness, its comparatively tiny establishments and extremely low productivity of labour, its primitive technique and small number of wage-workers, peasant industry is capitalism. They simply cannot grasp the point that capital is a certain relation between people, a relation which remains the same whether the categories under comparison are at a higher or a lower level of development. Bourgeois economists have never been able to understand this; they have always objected to such a definition of capital. 1 recall how one of them, writing in Russkaya Mysl about Sieber’s book (on Marx’s theory), quoted this definition (capital is a relation), and indignantly put exclamation marks after it. To regard the categories of the bourgeois regime as eternal and natural is most typical of bourgeois philosophers. That is why, for capital, too, they adopt such definitions as, for example, accumulated labour that serves for further production—that is, describe it as an eternal category of human society, thereby obscuring that specific, historically definite economic formation in which this “accumulated labour,” organised by commodity economy, falls into the hands of those who do not work and serves for the exploitation of the labour of others. That is why, instead of an analysis and study of a definite system of production relations, they give us a series of banalities applicable to any system, mixed with the sentimental pap of pettybourgeois morality. And now look at this—why do the “friends of the people” call this industry “people’s,” and why do they contrast it to capitalist industry? It is only because these gentlemen are petty-bourgeois ideologists and cannot even conceive

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V. I. L E N I N

that these small producers live and operate under a system of commodity economy (that is why I call them petty bourgeois) and that their relations to the market necessarily and inevitably split them into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat. Why don’t you try studying the real organisation of our “people’s” industries instead of phrase-mongering about what they “might” lead to, then we will see whether you can find in Russia any branch of handicraft industry, at all developed, which is not organised on capitalist lines. And if you do not agree that the monopolising of the means of production by a minority, their alienation from the majority, and the exploitation of wage-labour (speaking more generally, the essence of capitalism is the appropriation by individuals of the product of social labour organised by commodity economy) are necessary and adequate features for this concept, then be good enough to give your “own” definition and your “own” history of capitalism. Actually, the organisation of our “people’s” handicraft industries furnishes an excellent illustration to the general history of the development of capitalism. It clearly demonstrates the latter’s origin, its inception, for example, in the form of simple co-operation (the top group in the pottery industry); it further shows how the “savings” that— thanks to commodity economy—accumulate in the hands of separate individuals become capital, which first monopolises marketing (“buyers-up” and traders), owing to the fact that only the owners of these “savings” possess the necessary funds for wholesale disposal, which enable them to wait until the goods are sold in distant markets; how, further, this merchant capital enslaves the mass of producers and organises capitalist manufacture, the capitalist domestic system of large-scale production; and how, finally, the expansion of the market and increasing competition lead to improved techniques, and how this merchant capital becomes industrial capital and organises large-scale machine production. And when this capital, having grown strong and enslaved millions of working people and whole districts, begins openly and brazenly to exert pressure on the government and turns it into its lackey—our ingenious “friends of the

WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE

219

people” raise a howl about “the implanting of capitalism,” about its “artificial creation”! A timely discovery, indeed! So that when Mr. Krivenko talks about people’s, real, proper, etc., industry, he is simply trying to conceal the fact that our handicraft industries are nothing but capitalism at various stages of development. We have already become sufficiently acquainted with these methods in the case of Mr. Yuzhakov, who, instead of studying the peasant Reform, used empty phrases about the fundamental aim of the momentous Manifesto, 67 etc.; who, instead of studying land renting, dubbed it people’s renting; and who, instead of studying how a home market is being formed for capitalism, philosophised about the latter’s inevitable collapse from lack of markets, and so on. To show how far Messrs. the “friends of the people” distort the facts, I shall dwell on one more example. * Our subjective philosophers so rarely condescend to give us precise references to facts that it would be unfair to ignore one of these most precise references of theirs, namely, the one Mr. Krivenko makes (No. 1, 1894) to the budgets of the Voronezh peasants. Here, on the basis of data selected by themselves, we may make quite sure which idea of reality is more correct—that of the Russian radicals and “friends of the people,” or that of the Russian Social-Democrats. Mr. Shcherbina, a Voronezh Zemstvo statistician, appends to his description of peasant farming in Ostrogozhsk Uyezd 24 budgets of typical peasant households, and analyses them in the text. **

* Although this example concerns the break-up of the peastry, about which much has already been said, I consider it necessary to analyse their own data in order to show clearly what an insolent lie it is to assert that the Social-Democrats are interested not in reality but in “prophesying the future,” and what charlatan methods the “friends of the people” use when in their controversies with us they ignore the substance of our views and dispose of them with nonsensical phrases. ** Statistical Returns for Voronezh Gubernia, Vol. II, Part II. Peasant Farming in Ostrogozhsk Uyezd, Voronezh, 1887. The budgets are given in the appendices, pp. 42-49, and the analysis in Chapter XVIII: “Composition and Budgets of Peasant Households.”

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V. I. L E N I N

Mr. Krivenko reproduces this analysis, failing, or rather refusing, to see that its methods are entirely unsuited to the purpose of getting an idea of the economy of our peasant farmers. The fact is that these 24 budgets depict entirely different households—prosperous, middle and poor—as Mr. Krivenko himself points out (p. 159); but, like Mr. Shcherbina, he simply employs average figures, lumping together the most different types of households, and thus completely disguises the fact of their differentiation. Yet the differentiation of our small producers is such a general, such a major fact (to which the Social-Democrats have long been drawing the attention of Russian socialists. See the works of Plekhanov.) that it is brought out quite distinctly even by the scanty data selected by Mr. Krivenko. Instead, when dealing with the farming of the peasants, of dividing them into categories according to the size of their farms and type of farming, he, like Mr. Shcherbina, divides them into legal categories—former state and former landlords’ peasants—directing all his attention to the greater prosperity of the former as compared with the latter, and loses sight of the fact that the differences among the peasants within these categories are far greater than the differences between the categories. * To prove this, I divide these 24 budgets into three groups. I pick out a) 6 prosperous peasants, then b) 11 peasants of average prosperity (Nos. 7 to 10 and 16 to 22 in Shcherbina’s table) and c) 7 poor peasants (Nos. 11 to 15, 23 and 24 in Shcherbina’s table of budgets). Mr. Krivenko says, for example, that the expenditure per farm of the former state peasants is 541.3 rubles, and of the former landlords’ peasants 417.7 rubles. But he overlooks the fact that the expenditures of different peasants are far from being equal: among the former state peasants, for instance, there is one with an expenditure of 84.7 rubles and another with an expenditure ten times as large—887.4 rubles (even if we leave out the

* Undoubtedly, the farm of a peasant who lives exclusively by agricultural pursuits and employs a labourer differs in type from the farm of a peasant who lives as a farm labourer and gets three-fifths of his earnings by farm-labouring. And among these 24 peasants there are both types. Judge for yourselves what kind of “science” will result if we lump together farm labourers and farmers who employ labourers, and make use of a general average!

WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE

221

German colonist with an expenditure of 1,456.2 rubles). What meaning can an average have if it is derived by lumping such magnitudes together? If we take the division into categories that I give, we find that the average expenditure per farm of a prosperous peasant is 855.86 rubles, of a middle peasant 471.61 rubles, and of a poor peasant 223.78 rubles. * The ratio is, roughly, 4 : 2 : 1. Let us proceed. Following in Shcherbina’s footsteps, Mr. Krivenko gives the expenditure on personal requirements among the various legal categories of peasants: among the former state peasants, for example, the annual expenditure per person on vegetable food is 13.4 rubles, and among the former landlords’ peasants 12.2 rubles. But if we take them according to economic categories, the figures are: a) 17.7; b) 14.5 and c) 13.1 The expenditure on meat and dairy produce per person among the former landlords’ peasants is 5.2 rubles and among the former state peasants 7.7 rubles. Taken by economic categories the figures are 11.7, 5.8 and 3.6 respectively. It is obvious that calculation according to legal categories merely conceals these huge divergences and nothing more. It is, therefore, obviously worthless. The income of the former state peasants is greater than the income of the former landlords’ peasants by 53.7 per cent—says Mr. Krivenko: the general average (for the 24 budgets) is 539 rubles; and for the two categories, over 600 rubles and about 400 rubles, respectively. But if graded according to economic strength, the incomes are a) 1,053.2 rubles, b) 473.8 rubles and c) 202.4 rubles, or a fluctuation of 10 : 2, and not 3 : 2. “The capital value of a peasant farm among the former state peasants is 1,060 rubles, and among the former landlords’ peasants 635 rubles,” says Mr. Krivenko. But if we take the economic categories, ** the figures are a) 1,737.91 rubles, b) 786.42 rubles and c) 363.38 rubles—again a fluctuation of 10 : 2, and not 3 : 2. By dividing the “peasantry” into legal categories the author prevented himself from

* The fluctuation in the size of the average family is much less: a) 7.83, b) 8.36, and c) 5.28 persons per family. ** The divergence is greater still in the value of implements owned. The average is 54.83 rubles per household. But among the

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V. I. L E N I N

forming a correct judgement of the economics of this “peasantry. ” If we examine the farms of the various types of peasants according to economic strength, we find that the prosperous families have an average income of 1,053.2 rubles, and expenditure of 855.86 rubles, or a net income of 197.34 rubles. The middle family has an income of 473.8 rubles and an expenditure of 471.61 rubles, or a net income of 2.19 rubles per farm (and that without counting credit debts and arrears)—obviously, it can barely make ends meet: out of 11 farms, 5 have a deficit. The bottom, poor, group run their farms at a direct loss: with an income of 202.4 rubles their expenditure is 223.78 rubles, which means a deficit of 21.38 rubles. * It is evident that if we lump farms together and strike a general average (net income— 44.11 rubles) we completely distort the real picture. We then overlook the fact (as Mr. Krivenko has done) that all the six prosperous peasants who secure a net income employ farm labourers (8 of them)—a fact which reveals the character of their farming (they are in process of becoming capitalist farmers), which yields them a net income and relieves them almost entirely of the need to resort to “industries.” These farmers all together cover only 6.5% of their budgets by industries (412 rubles out of a total of 6,319.5); moreover, these industries—as Mr. Shcherbina in one place remarks—are of such a type as “carting,” or even “dealing in sheep,” that is, such as, far from indicating dependence, presuppose the exploitation of others (precisely in the second case: accumulated “savings” are converted into merchant capital). These peasants own 4 industrial establishments, which yield an income of 320 rubles (5% of the total). ** The economy of the middle peasants is of a different type: they, as we have seen, can barely make ends meet. well-to-do peasants it is twice as much—111.80 rubles, and among the poor peasants one-third the amount—16.04 rubles. Among the middle peasants it is 48.44 rubles. * It is interesting to note that the budgets of the farm labourers— two out of the seven poor peasants—show no deficit: income 99 rubles and expenditure 93.45 rubles per family. One of the farm labourers is fed, clothed and shod by his master. ** See Appendix I (p. 301 of this volume.—Ed.).

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223

Farming does not cover their needs, and 19% of their income is from so-called industries. What sort of industries these are we learn from Mr. Shcherbina’s article. They are given for 7 peasants: only two engage in independent industries (tailoring and charcoal-burning); the remaining 5 sell their labour-power (“went mowing in the lowlands,” * “works at a distillery,” “does day-labouring at harvest-time,” “herds sheep,” “worked on the local estate”). These are already half peasants, half workers. Side occupations divert them from their farming and thus undermine it completely. As to the poor peasants, they farm at a dead loss, the significance of “industries” in their budgets is still greater (providing 24% of the income), and these industries amount almost entirely (except in the case of one peasant) to the sale of labour-power. In the case of two of them, “industries” (farm-labouring) predominate, providing two-thirds of their income. It is quite clear that what we have here is a process of the complete differentiation of the small producers, the upper groups of whom are being turned into a bourgeoisie, the lower into a proletariat. Naturally, if we take general averages we shall see nothing of this and get no idea of the economics of the countryside. It was only his operations with these fictitious averages that enabled the author to adopt the following method. To determine the place of these typical farms in the peasant farming of the uyezd as a whole, Mr. Shcherbina groups the peasants according to the size of their allotments, and it transpires that the level of prosperity (general average) of the 24 farms selected is higher by about one-third than the average in the uyezd. This calculation cannot be regarded as satisfactory, both because there is great divergence among these 24 peasants and because the classification according to size of allotment conceals the differentiation of the peasantry: the author’s thesis that the “allotments are the prime cause of the prosperity” of the peasant is absolutely wrong. Everybody knows that the “equal” distribution of land within the village community does not in any way prevent its horseless members from giv-

* Peasants from Voronezh Gubernia hired themselves out to rich Cossacks in the Don lowlands for the haymaking.—Ed. Eng. ed.

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ing up the land, letting it, going away to work and turning into proletarians; or the members with many horses from renting large tracts of land and running big and profitable farms. If, for example, we take our 24 budgets, we shall see that one rich peasant, with 6 dessiatines of allotment land, has a total income of 758.5 rubles; a middle peasant, with 7.1 dessiatines of allotment land, 391.5 rubles; and a poor peasant, with 6.9 dessiatines of allotment land, 109.5 rubles. In general, we have seen that the ratio of the incomes of the various groups is 4 : 2 : 1; while the ratio of allotment land is 22.1 : 9.2 : 8.5, which equals 2.6 : 1.08 : 1. This is quite natural, for we find, for example, that the rich peasants, with 22.1 dessiatines of allotment land per housebold, rent an additional 8.8 dessiatines each, whereas the middle peasants, who have smaller allotments (9.2 dessiatines), rent less—7.7 dessiatines, and the poor peasants, with still smaller allotments (8.5 dessiatines), rent only 2.8 dessiatines. * And so, when Mr. Krivenko says: “Unfortunately, the data given by Mr. Shcherbina cannot serve as an accurate measure of the general state of affairs even in the uyezd, let alone the gubernia”—all that we can say is that they cannot serve as a measure only when you resort to the wrong method of calculating general averages (a method which Mr. Krivenko should not have resorted to), but that, generally speaking, Mr. Shcherbina’s data are so comprehensive and valuable that they enable us to arrive at correct conclusions and that if Mr. Krivenko has not done so, it is not Mr. Shcherbina who is to blame. The latter, for example, gives on page 197 a classification of the peasants according to draught animals and not according to allotment land, that is, a classification on economic, not legal lines—and this gives us every ground for asserting that the ratios between the various categories of the selected 24 typical households are absolutely identical with the ratios between the various economic groups throughout the uyezd. * Of course, I do not mean to say that the data for the 24 farms are alone enough to refute the thesis that the allotments are of prime importance. But above we cited data for several uyezds which totally refute it. 68

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WHAT THE “FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE” ARE

The classification is as follows: *

Total . . .

Of the 24 typical households**

With no implements

Average family (persons)

With no working member Cultivating no land

Rented

0.7

6.2

0.2

4.6

0.6

4.0 9.5 16.6 41.6 98.5

31.3

3.0

9.4

1.3

5.7

1.4

5.4 1.4

4.9

2.9

2.5

33.3

6.8 13.8

3.6

7.7

8.3 12.3 0.4

1.3

0.4

—

9.4 14.3 21.3 12.3 11.2 25.3 34.2 0.1

0.4

0.3

—

Farm labourers Poor peasants Middle peasants Prosperous peasants Total

4.4 11.2

2.5

6.7

0.5 2.8

7.2 8.7

0.0 3.9

4.5 5.6

8.1

9.2

7.7

8.3

13.5 22.1

8.8

7.8

7.2 12.2

6.6

7.3 ***

With no house

Allotment

26.0

33,581 100.0

{

Land (dess.)

Percentage of households

Head of cattle

I. With no draught animals . . . . 8,728 II. With 1 draught animal . . . . . 10,510 III. With 2 or 3 draught animals . . . . 11,191 IV. With 4 or more draught animals . . . 3,152

Per household

Percentage

Householders

Number

With farm labourers With com. or ind. estabs.

Groups of householders according to number of draught animals owned

Ostrogozhsk Uyezd, Voronezh Gubernia

5.7 10.0 3.0

6.3 11.9 23.4

* The comparison of the 24 typical households with the categories of farms for the whole uyezd has been made by the same methods as Mr. Shcherbina used in comparing the average of the 24 farms with groups based on size of allotment. ** Two farm labourers (Nos. 14 and 15 of Shcherbina’s budgets) have here been eliminated from the group of poor peasants, so that only 5 poor peasants remain. *** It must be noted in connection with this table that here too we find that the amount of rented land increases in proportion to growing prosperity, despite the increase in allotment land. Thus, the facts for one more uyezd confirm the fallacy of the idea that the allotments are of prime importance. On the contrary we find that the proportion of allotment land to the total holding of a given

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There can be no doubt that the general averages of the 24 typical farms are superior to the general run of peasant farm in the uyezd. But if, instead of these fictitious averages, we take economic categories, a comparison becomes possible. We find that the farm labourers on typical farms are somewhat below the peasants who have no draught animals, group diminishes as the prosperity of the group increases. Adding allotment land to rented land, and calculating the percentage of allotment land to the total, we obtain the following figures by groups: I) 96.8%; II) 85.0%; III) 79.3%; IV) 63.3%. And this is quite natural. We know that with the emancipation Reform, land in Russia became a commodity. Whoever has money can always buy land; and allotment land too must be bought. It is obvious that the prosperous peasants concentrate land in their hands, and that this concentration is more marked in the case of rented land because of the medieval restrictions on the transfer of allotments. The “friends of the people,” who favour these restrictions, do not realise that this senseless reactionary measure only worsens the condition of the poor peasants: the ruined peasants, possessing no agricultural implements, are obliged, in any case, to lease their land, and any prohibition on such leasing (or sale) will lead either to land being leased secretly, and, consequently, on worse terms for those who lease it, or to the poor peasants surrendering their land for nothing to the “village community,” i.e., again to the kulak. I cannot refrain from quoting a profoundly true comment made by Hourwich on this vaunted “inalienability”: “To see our way clearly through the question at issue, we have to discover who are the buyers of the land sold by peasants. We have seen that only a minor portion of the quarterly lots have been purchased by merchants. As a rule, the small lots sold by the nobility are acquired by peasants only. The question at issue is thus one that has been settled as between peasants alone, and that affects neither the interests of the nobility nor those of the capitalistic class. In such cases it may well please the Russian government to throw a sop to the peasantists [Narodniks]. This mésallance of oriental paternalism with some queer sort of state socialistic prohibitionism, however, would be apt to meet with opposition from the very ones who were supposed to be benefited. As the process of dissolution is obviously spreading from within, and not from without the village, inalienability of peasant land would simply mean gratuitous expropriation of the poor for the benefit of the wealthy members of the community. “We notice that the percentage of emigrants among the quarterly possessors 69 who have enjoyed the right of alienating their land has been far greater than that among the former state peasants who live in agrarian communism: namely, in the Ranenburg district (Ryazan Gubernia) the percentage of emigrants among the former is

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but approach them very closely. The poor peasants approximate very closely to the owners of one draught animal (the number of cattle is less by 0.2—the poor peasants have 2.8 and the one-horse peasants 3.0—but on the other hand, their total land, both allotment and rented, is somewhat more—12.6 dessiatines as against 10.7 dessiatines). The middle peasants are only slightly above those with two or three draught animals (they have slightly more cattle and a little less land), while the prosperous peasants approximate to those who have four or more draught animals, being a little below them. We are therefore entitled to draw the conclusion that in the uyezd as a whole not less than one-tenth of the peasants engage in regular, profitable farming and have no need for outside work. (Their income—it is important to note—is expressed in money, and therefore presupposes agriculture of a commercial character.) To a large extent they conduct 17, among the latter it is 9. In the Dankov district among the former it is 12 and among the latter it is 5. “To what is this difference due? A single concrete example will clear up the matter. “In 1881 a small community of 5 households, former serfs of Grigorov, emigrated from the village of Bigildino, district of Dankov. Their land, 30 dessiatines, was sold to a rich peasant in consideration of 1,500 rubles. The emigrants could not make a living at home, and most of them were yearly labourers. (Statistical Report, Part II, pp. 115, 247.) According to Mr. Grigoryev (Emigration of the Peasants of Ryazan Gubernia), 300 rubles, the price of an average peasant holding of 6 dessiatines, is sufficient to enable a peasant family to start farming in Southern Siberia. A peasant who has been absolutely ruined is thus enabled, through the sale of his lot in the communal land, to rise to the position of a farmer in the new country. Devotion to the sacred customs of forefathers would hardly be able to withstand such a temptation as this, but for the helpful right hand of the most gracious Bureaucracy. “I shall, of course, be charged with pessimism, as I have been recently on account of my views on the emigration of the peasants. (Severny Vestnik, 1892, No. 5, in an article by A. Bogdanovsky.) The usual method of reasoning followed takes some such course as this: Granted that the case is presented true to life as it actually stands, the evil consequences” (of emigration) “are nevertheless due to the present abnormal condition of the peasantry, and under normal circumstances, the objections are ‘no good.’ Unhappily, however, these very ‘abnormal’ conditions are developing spontaneously, while the creation of ‘normal’ conditions is beyond the jurisdiction of the well-wishers of the peasantry.” (Op. cit., p. 137. 70 )

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their farming with the help of hired labourers: not less than one-fourth of all the households employ regular farm labourers, and the number employing temporary day labourers is not known. Further, more than half the peasants in the uyezd are poor (nearly six-tenths: horseless and one-horse peasants, 26% # 31.3%= 57.3%), who conduct their farming at a dead loss and are consequently sinking into ruin, steadily and inexorably being expropriated. They are obliged to sell their labour-power and about one-fourth of the peasants already gain their livelihood more by wage-labour than by agriculture. The remaining are middle peasants, who carry on somehow, farming at a regular loss made up by outside earnings, and who, consequently, have no economic stability whatever. I have deliberately dwelt on these data in such detail in order to show how distorted is Mr. Krivenko’s picture of the real situation. Without stopping to think, he takes general averages and operates with them. Naturally, the result is not even a fiction but a downright falsehood. We have seen, for example, that the net income (# 197.34 rubles) of one prosperous peasant (from among the typical budgets) covers the deficits of nine poor households (—21.38 8 9= —192.42), so that 10% of rich peasants in the uyezd will not only cover the deficits of 57% of poor peasants but even yield a certain surplus. And Mr. Krivenko, deriving from the average budget of the 24 farms a surplus of 44.14 rubles— or, deducting credit debts and arrears, 15.97 rubles—simply speaks of the “decline” of the middle and lower-than-middle peasants. Actually, however, one can talk of decline only in reference, perhaps, to the middle peasants, * whereas in the case of the mass of poor peasants we observe direct expropriation, accompanied, moreover, by the concentration of the means of production in the hands of a minority who own comparatively large and firmly-established farms. Because he ignored this latter circumstance, the author failed to observe another very interesting feature of these budgets, namely, that they likewise prove that the differ-

* And even this would scarcely be true, because decline implies a temporary and casual loss of stability, whereas the middle peasants as we have seen, are always in a stale of instability, on the verge of ruin.

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entiation of the peasantry is creating a home market. On the one hand, as we pass from the top group to the bottom, we observe the growing importance of income from industries (6.5%, 18.8% and 23.6% of the total budget of the prosperous, middle and poor peasants, respectively), that is, chiefly from the sale of labour-power. On the other hand, as we pass from the bottom to the top groups, we observe the growing commodity (nay, more: bourgeois, as we have seen) character of agriculture and an increase in the proportion of produce disposed of: the total income from agriculture of the 3,163.8 , 689.9 . 3,861.7 , b) c) The denomicategories is a) 1,774.4 899.9 175.25 nator indicates the money part of the income, * which constitutes 45.9%, 28.3% and 25.4% respectively, passing from the top category to the bottom. Here we again see clearly how the means of production taken from the expropriated peasants turn into capital. It is quite obvious that Mr. Krivenko could not draw correct conclusions from the material used—or, rather, misused—in this way. After describing the money character of peasant farming in Novgorod Gubernia on the basis of what he was told by a peasant from those parts with whom he travelled by rail, he was forced to draw the correct conclusion that it is precisely this circumstance, commodity economy, that “cultivates” “special abilities” and gives rise to one preoccupation: “to get it (the hay) mown as cheaply as possible” and “sell it as dear as possible” (n. 156). ** This

* A fairly complex calculation was required to arrive at the money income from agriculture (which Shcherbina does not give). It was necessary to exclude from the total income from crops the income derived from straw and chaff, which, according to the author are used as cattle feed. The author himself excludes them in Chapter XVIII, but only for the total figures for the uyezd, and not for the given 24 households. Taking his total figures, I determined the proportion of income from grain (compared with the total income from the crops, i.e., both from grain and from straw and chaff) and on this basis excluded straw and chaff in the present case. This proportion is, for rye 78.98%, for wheat 72.67%, for oats and barley 73.32% and for millet and buckwheat 77.78%. The amount of grain sold was then determined by excluding the amount consumed on the farm itself. ** “The worker must be hired cheap and the most made out of him,” Mr. Krivenko quite rightly remarks in the same passage.

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serves as a “school” which “awakens” (quite true!) “and refines commercial gifts.” “Talented people come to the fore to become the Kolupayevs, the Derunovs 71 and other types of blood-suckers, * while the simple-hearted and simple-minded fall behind, deteriorate, become impoverished and pass into the ranks of the farm labourers” (p. 156). The data for a gubernia in which entirely different conditions prevail—an agricultural one (Voronezh)—lead to exactly the same conclusions. One would have thought the situation was quite clear: the system of commodity economy stands out distinctly as the main background of the economic life of the country in general and of the “community” “peasantry” in particular; the fact also stands out that this commodity economy, and it alone, is splitting the “people” and the “peasantry” into a proletariat (they become ruined, enter the ranks of the farm labourers) and a bourgeoisie (blood-suckers), i.e., it is turning into capitalist economy. But the “friends of the people” never dare look realities in the face and call a spade a spade (that would be too “harsh”)! And Mr. Krivenko argues as follows: “Some people consider this state of affairs quite natural” (he should have added: a quite natural consequence of the capitalist character of production relations. Then it would have been an accurate description of the views of “some people,” and then it would have been impossible for him to dispose of these views with empty phrases and he would have had to make a real analysis of the matter. When the author did not deliberately set out to combat these “some people,” he himself bad to admit that money economy is precisely the “school” that produces “talented” blood-suckers and “simplehearted” farm labourers) “and regard it as the irresistible mission of capitalism.” (Well, of course! To believe that the struggle has to be waged against this “school” and the “blood-suckers” who dominate it, together with their administrative and intellectual lackeys, is to consider that capitalism cannot be overcome! But to leave the capitalist

* Mr. Yuzhakov, how’s this! Here is your colleague saying that “talented people” become “blood-suckers, ”whereas you assured us that people become so only because they have “uncritical minds.” That won’t do, gentlemen, contradicting each other like this in one and the same magazine!

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“school” with its blood-suckers in complete immunity and to want to eliminate its capitalist products by means of liberal half-measures is to be a true “friend of the people”!) “We look at the matter somewhat differently. Capitalism undoubtedly does play an important part here, as we pointed out above” (this refers to the remark about the school of blood-suckers and farm labourers), “but it cannot be said that its role is so all-embracing and decisive that no other factors are responsible for the changes taking place in the national economy, and that the future holds out no other solution” (p. 160). There you are! Instead of giving an exact and straightforward description of the present system, instead of giving a definite answer to the question of why the “peasantry” is splitting into blood-suckers and farm labourers, Mr. Krivenko disposes of the matter with meaningless phrases. “It cannot be said that the role of capitalism is decisive.” Why, that is the whole question: can it be said, or can it not? To uphold your opinion you should have indicated what other factors are “decisive,” what other “solution” there can be besides the one indicated by the Social-Democrats, namely, the class struggle of the proletariat against the blood-suckers. * But nothing is indicated. Unless, perhaps, the author regards the following as an indication? Amusing as it may be, you can expect anything from the “friends of the people.” “The first to fall into decline, as we have seen, are the weak farms poor in land”—namely, with allotments of less than five dessiatines. “But the typical farms of the state peasants, with allotments of 5.7 dessiatines, are distinguished for their stability.... True, to secure such an income (a net income of 80 rubles) they rent an additional five dessiatines but that only shows what they need.” What does this “amendment,” which links up the notorious “land poverty” with capitalism, amount to? Only to

* If only urban factory workers are as yet capable of assimilating the idea of the class struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, while the rural “simple-hearted and simple-minded” farm labourers i.e., the people who have actually lost those charming qualities so closely bound up with the “age-old basis” and the “community spirit,” are not—it only proves the correctness of the Social-Democrats’ theory of the progressive and revolutionary role of Russian capitalism.

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this, that those who have little lose that little, while those who have much (15.7 dessiatines each) acquire still more. * But, then, this is a meaningless paraphrase of the statement that some sink into ruin while others grow rich!! It is high time to abandon this meaningless talk about land poverty, which explains nothing (because the peasants are not given allotments free but have to buy them); it only describes a process, and moreover describes it inaccurately, because one should not speak about the land alone, but about the means of production in general, and not say that the peasants have a “poor” supply of them, but that they are being freed from them, are being expropriated by growing capitalism. “We have no intention of saying,” Mr. Krivenko remarks, concluding his philosophical discourse, “that agriculture should and can, under all circumstances, remain ‘natural’ and separated from manufacturing industry” (another phrase! Was it not you who were just obliged to admit that a school of money economy already exists, which presupposes exchange and, consequently, the separation of agriculture from manufacturing industry? Why again this sloppy talk of what can be and what should be?); “all we say is that to create a separate industry artificially is irrational” (it would be interesting to know: is the industry of the Kimry and Pavlovo handicraftsmen “separate,” and who “artificially created” it, and how and when?), “and that the separation of the labourer from the land and the instruments of production is being effected not by capitalism alone, but also by other factors that precede and promote it.” Here most likely he again had in mind the profound idea that if the labourer is separated from the land, which passes into the hands of the blood-sucker, this happens because the former is “poor” and the latter is “rich” in land. And this kind of philosophy charges the Social-Democrats with “narrowness” for regarding capitalism as the decisive factor!... I have dwelt once more in such detail on the differentiation of the peasants and handicraftsmen just because it was necessary to bring out clearly how the Social-Democrats picture the matter and how they explain

* Not to mention the absurdity of the idea that peasants with equal allotments are equal and are not also divided into “bloodsuckers” and “farm labourers.”

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it. It was necessary to show that the facts which to the subjective sociologist mean that the peasants have “grown poor,” while the “money chasers” and “blood-suckers” “derive profits for their own advantage,” to the materialist mean the bourgeois differentiation of the commodity producers necessitated by commodity production itself. It was necessary to show what facts serve as the basis for the thesis (quoted above in Part 1) * that the struggle between the propertied and the propertyless is going on everywhere in Russia, not only in the mills and factories, but even in the most remote villages, and that everywhere this struggle is one between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat that emerge as a result of commodity economy. The breakup, the depeasantisation of our peasants and handicraftsmen, which can be depicted accurately thanks to the admirable material provided by Zemstvo statistics, furnishes factual proof of the correctness of precisely the SocialDemocratic conception of Russian reality, the conception that the peasant and the handicraftsman are petty producers in the “categorical” meaning of the term, that is, are petty bourgeois. This thesis may be called the central point of the theory of WORKING-CLASS SOCIALISM as against the old peasant socialism, which understood neither the conditions of commodity economy in which the petty producers live, nor their capitalist differentiation due to these conditions. And, therefore, whoever wanted to criticise Social-Democracy seriously should have concentrated his argument on this, and shown that from the angle of political economy Russia is not a system of commodity economy, that it is not this which causes the break-up of the peasantry, and that the expropriation of the mass of the population and the exploitation of the working people can be explained by something other than the bourgeois, capitalist organisation of our social (including peasant) economy. Well, just try it, gentlemen! There is another reason why it was the data on peasant and handicraft economy that I preferred to take in illustration of the Social-Democratic theory. It would be a departure from the materialist method were I, when criticising the

* See

p. 191 of this volume.—Ed.

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views of the “friends of the people,” to confine myself to contrasting their ideas with the Marxist ideas. One must in addition explain the “Narodnik” ideas, demonstrate their MATERIAL basis in our present social-economic relations. Illustrations and examples of the economy of our peasants and handicraftsmen show what this “peasant” is whose ideologists the “friends of the people” want to be. They demonstrate the bourgeois character of our rural economy and thus confirm the correctness of classifying the “friends of the people” as ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie. But this is not all; they show that there is the closest connection between the ideas and programmes of our radicals and the interests of the petty bourgeoisie. It is this connection, which will become even clearer after a detailed examination of their programme, that explains why these radical ideas are so widespread in our “society”; it also admirably explains the political servility of the “friends of the people” and their readiness for compromise. There was, lastly, one other reason for dwelling in such detail on the economics of precisely those sides of our social life where capitalism is least developed and from which the Narodniks have usually drawn the material for their theories. A study and description of these economics was the simplest way to reply in substance to one of the most widespread objections to Social-Democracy current among people here. Proceeding from the usual idea that capitalism contradicts the “people’s system,” and observing that the Social-Democrats regard large-scale capitalism as progressive, that it is large-scale capitalism that they want to have as their basis in combating the present robber regime— our radicals, without more ado, accuse the Social-Democrats of ignoring the interests of the mass of the peasant population, of desiring “to put every muzhik through the factory melting pot,” etc. All these arguments are based on the amazingly illogical and strange procedure of judging capitalism by what it really is, but the countryside by what it “might be.” Naturally, there could be no better reply to this than to show them the real countryside and its real economics Anybody who studies these economics dispassionately and scientifically will be bound to admit that rural Russia

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constitutes a system of small, scattered markets (or small branches of a central market), which regulate the social and economic life of separate small districts. And in each of these districts we find all the phenomena that are, in general, peculiar to the social-economic organisation whose regulator is the market: we find the division of the once equal, patriarchal direct producers into rich and poor; we find the rise of capital, especially of merchant capital, which spins its web around the working people and sucks the lifeblood out of them. When you compare the descriptions of peasant economy given by our radicals with precise firsthand data on rural economic life, you are astonished that there is no place in the criticised system of views for that mass of small hucksters who swarm in each of these markets, all these higglers and chafferers or whatever else the peasants call them in different localities, for all that mass of petty exploiters who dominate the markets and ruthlessly oppress the working people. They are usually simply brushed aside with the remark—“These are no longer peasants, but hucksters.” Yes, you are quite right: these are “no longer peasants.” But try to treat all these “traders” as a distinct group, that is, speaking in the precise language of political economy, those who engage in commercial enterprise and who appropriate, to whatever extent, the labour of others; try to express in precise figures the economic strength of this group and the part it plays in the entire economic life of the district; and then try to treat as an opposite group all those who also are “no longer peasants” because they bring their labour-power to the market, because they work for others and not for themselves—try to fulfil these elementary requisites of a dispassionate and serious inquiry and you will get such a vivid picture of bourgeois differentiation that not a trace of the “people’s system” myth will remain. This mass of small rural exploiters represents a terrible force, especially terrible because they oppress the isolated, single toiler, because they fetter him to themselves and deprive him of all hope of deliverance; terrible because this exploitation, in view of the barbarism of the countryside due to the low labour productivity characteristic of the system described and to the absence of communications, constitutes not only robbery of labour, but also the Asiatic abuse of human dignity that

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is constantly encountered in the countryside. Now, if you compare this real countryside with our capitalism you will understand why the Social-Democrats regard the work of our capitalism as progressive when it draws these small, scattered markets together into one nation-wide market, when, in place of the legion of small well-meaning bloodsuckers, it creates a handful of big “pillars of the fatherland,” when it socialises labour and raises its productivity, when it shatters the subordination of the working people to the local blood-suckers and subordinates them to large-scale capital. This subordination is progressive compared with the former— despite all the horrors of the oppression of labour, of gradual extinction, brutalisation, and the crippling of the bodies of women and children, etc.—because it AWAKENS THE MIND OF THE WORKER , converts dumb and incoherent discontent into conscious protest, converts scattered, petty, senseless revolt into an organised class struggle for the emancipation of all working folk, a struggle which derives its strength from the very conditions of existence of this large-scale capitalism, and therefore can undoubtedly count upon CERTAIN SUCCESS. In reply to t